Does the size of the Co-operative party have any practical implication?

Question

In the UK General Election, 2017, the Co-operative Party got its best ever result with 38 seats. The Co-operative Party has an electoral pact with the Labour Party but is technically distinct from it. Is there any practical implication that the Co-operative party is now larger than ever, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of the Labour Party?

Answer 1

Although it sounds counter-intuitive many of the MP's of the Co-operative party are to the ideological right of the Labour leadership. Indeed their was a plan last year that the co-operative party could sign up MP's dissatisfied with the Labour leadership and act as the official opposition themselves.

I don't have many citations for the following as it is largely based around personal experience. As I mentioned above a significant proportion of the co-operative party maintain stances that are ideological right of the Labour party's leadership, they act however mostly as a pressure group and voting bloc within the Labour party. The co-operative party is guaranteed certain seats and offices at Labour constituencies across the UK ( just like how women and BME and LGBT people are guaranteed such positions), and often develop a slightly different agenda than many other organisations that work within the Labour party or support it (e.g Momentum, Scientists for Labour, Labour friends of Israel etc.) therefore the major practical implication is that this bloc within the Labour party will have more influence and greater amount of votes, when coming to decide Labour party policy on certain issues.