Speech index suggests lack of togetherness

The forthcoming general election is turning into a co-operative election, with increasing debate about the importance of co-operatives to our economy.

And so, with co-operatives high on the agenda, research conducted by Co-operativesUK (www.cooperatives-uk.coop) has today revealed just how co-operative the language of our political leaders really is.

“With both the Conservatives and Labour showing their support for co-operation and co-operative principles over the past month, The Co-operative Speech Index reveals some interesting results,” said Ed Mayo, Secretary General of Co-operativesUK.

The study, ranks the words that politicians and other well-known community figures use in speeches as a measure of their interest in collaborative working, and compares the use of words ‘I’ and ‘we’.

Although UK politicians compare favourably with their European counterparts, scoring higher on the index than Nicholas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel, they do not come anywhere near the community voice of Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury.

“None of our party leaders come close to Rowan Williams, who scored 5.82 on the Co-operative Index,” said Ed Mayo.

“Both David Cameron and Gordon Brown scored over 2.5 on the Co-operative Index, with Cameron slightly ahead on 2.79, compared to Brown’s 2.64. Nick Clegg, on the other hand, trails behind, with a score of just 1.85.”

And when compared to one of the most defining and greatest speeches of all time from Winston Churchill (June 4th 1940) – We shall fight them on the beaches, none of the party leaders come close to his collective appeal.

Ed Mayo added: “Co-operativesUK is emphatically not party political, but as a network for co-operative enterprises, we are interested in knowing whether the politicians that are competing for our vote are committed to the principles of working together.”

Co-operation as a business model was developed in Rochdale over 165 years ago and has spread across the globe, so that now nearly one billion of the world’s population are members of a co-operative.

“The Co-operative Speech Index is clearly a playful test, not a scientific one” Ed Mayo says. “But there is a serious message behind it – namely that so many of the big issues we face, from economic recovery through to climate change, require co-operation to solve them.”