Mr Steerpike is a fan of Accidental Partridge moments, and this one was back of the net. Lefty actor Steve Coogan popped up on BBC Breakfast this morning to talk up his appearance at this weekend’s Co-op congress in Rochdale. Amid swipes at the government and big business, the comedian was becoming visibly exasperated by presenters Charlie Stayt and Naga Munchetty who kept interrupting with inane and repetitive questions about how cooperatives work.
So it was unfortunate that with his attempt to define the concept, things took a sharp turn to the right. Giving the example of tenant collectives, Coogan said:
‘When you act as individuals, you have no power. If you’ve got cockroaches and damp in your house and awful conditions, if you act as an individual you might as well shout into the void. You’ll get no response. But if you belong to an organisation where you have a group of people then by power of numbers you have leverage. Basically, you can break one stick but you get a bundle of sticks tied together, you can’t break them.’
'You can break one stick, but if you get a bundle of sticks tied together you can't break them'
— BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) July 4, 2025
Actor Steve Coogan told #BBCBreakfast why he believes the co-operative movement still has a significant role to play in societyhttps://t.co/p1vC293CYv pic.twitter.com/OkbMT5z2Es
If that analogy sounds familiar, it is because it is similar to the one Mussolini used to sell fascism to the Italians. In Roman times, the fasces was a bundle of sticks tied together, their collective strength allowing the fasces to support an executioner’s axe. Mussolini seized on this as a metaphor for what he regarded as the collective power to challenge the ruling elites that fascism offered to ordinary Italians.
He put the fasces on membership cards for one of his early political movements, which later became known as Partito Nazionale Fascista, the National Fascist Party. During the party’s rule over the Kingdom of Italy, from 1922 to 1943, the fasces became a near ubiquitous emblem, appearing on everything from the national coat of arms to the coinage. Mussolini said ‘the Fascist emblem signifies unity, force and justice’.
And now, it seems, the Cooperative movement, if Steve Coogan is to be believed. As Alan Partridge didn’t quite say, the more I learn about the Co-op, the more I dislike it.
Comments