How British Labour reformers are looking to Australia to reshape public ownership
London: The Labor movement behind Andy Burnham has a message for Australia about the reforms they will implement if they get the chance after Britain’s new prime minister finally comes to power.
Burnham, who took office on Monday, has vowed to restore public ownership of essential services to end decades of steep price increases following the privatization of water, rail and energy assets.
Labor ally Andrew Pakes says the solution is to adopt the co-operative ownership model that has helped build some of Britain’s biggest businesses and has also been successful in Australia.
Pakes, the Labor MP from regional Peterborough in England, is in Australia this week to talk to Labor members at their conference in Adelaide about the lessons for both countries in delivering serious economic reforms and improving basic services.
“There is a huge appetite to look at how we can build a purpose-driven economy that puts communities into the equation, not just profit and loss,” he says.
“We are looking at new areas of collaboration and social enterprise, such as expanding affordable housing, as well as adult social care, to address the housing crisis.
“It’s about how we can use the cooperative model in our supply chains, especially for things like food and agriculture.”
Pakes is a member of a faction within the Labor Party that dates back to the Co-operative Party, founded in 1917, and has been affiliated with the Labor Party since the formal alliance in 1927.
Burnham is a member of the same group called the Workers’ Cooperative and believes in its core principles. Even today, Workers’ Cooperative members wait for approval from this group, a sort of caucus within the party, before running for parliament.
When Pakes talks about public ownership of the new British government, he says it is built on the foundations already known to millions of consumers who are members of a common organisation.
These include the Co-op supermarket chain, which has 5 million members, the Nationwide Building Society, which has 16 million members, and the John Lewis department store, which employs 74,000 people.
This is not new to Australia, given that the co-operative model supports member-owned banks, farmer groups, housing organizations and giant partnerships for riders such as NRMA and RACV.
“One of the main purposes of my visit to Australia is to share the Workers’ Cooperative’s desire to share with colleagues in the Australian government about how modern governments can run the economy differently,” says Pakes.
“Millions of people in the UK are members of a common organisation, even if they don’t know it.
“This is largely through building societies, which have grown as one of the main long-term lenders of mortgages and secure borrowing to enable working families to get on the housing ladder.
“We are seriously exploring how we can leverage some of that financial firepower.”
Burnham may share policy ideas with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, but they already have some things in common. They both grew up in Catholic families and attended Catholic schools before college. Both are committed to rugby league. They both joined their parties at the age of 15.
(Albanese famously spoke of his “three faiths”: the Catholic Church, the Labor Party and the Rabbis. If this applied to Burnham, he would need four faiths: as well as supporting the Leigh Leopards rugby league team, Everton in the Premier League).
Speaking to this masthead in London before flying to Australia, Pakes says one of the lessons for both countries is that the common model can be used to tackle the housing shortage.
“I think there is a sense in both countries that the younger generation is being deprived of some of the privileges that their parents and grandparents had,” he says.
“Affordable housing and quality housing close to jobs are a challenge in both countries.”
Pakes entered the House of Commons in 2024 after many years as a Labor policy adviser and councillor, defeating the Conservative Party in a constituency with high immigration and modest incomes compared to nearby wealthier cities such as Cambridge.
Although the Burnham government has only just taken shape, its general policy direction appears to support public ownership and local control over huge privatized public services. But there are no policy details indicating exactly where the new prime minister and his cabinet will start or whether their ideas will work.
Pakes is confident that the co-operative model will feature in this policy plan over time and that Australia and Britain can learn from each other.
“Andy Burnham is a politician from the heart of the British co-operative movement,” he says.
“This is the greatest opportunity for a moment of collaboration in the revival of the UK Labor movement and the Labor government.”
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David Crowe is the European correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect with: X or email.
