Co-op needs the ring of cash registers to drown out rebel yells

The Co-op, which edged back into the black in 2014, can still smack of a 1980s student union meeting. Here, discussions on bar management were susceptible to interruption by donkey-jacketed activists demanding (for example) that "we totally and categorically condemn the actions of the imperialist, fascist US in Central America". As if the US gave a damn what some tutor-dodging students thought.

At the once-great mutual business, the challenge comes in the form of a rebel motion to rework its mission statement. A reform movement kicked off by Lord Myners has coalesced around the battle cry: "Championing a better way of doing business for you and your communities." The subtext is that the food and funerals group would be no help to the lower-income folk it mainly serves if driven into bankruptcy by internal feuding. This fate was narrowly averted in 2013.

Some members evidently want to expunge the words "doing business" and with it, one presumes, a new focus on financial results. That would be unwise. Co-op has a long way to go to regain competitiveness. Profits "before member payments", an analogue for pre-tax profits in a quoted company, were £124m last year, compared with a £255m loss in 2013. But the pivot is smaller, from a £16m loss to a £17m gain, when one-off gains and impairments are stripped out.

The board has a decent strategy, a chairman in Allan Leighton whose father was a store manager, and a president who has loyally shopped at Co-op for five years. Lombard, who once proudly bought a can of beans at a Co-op, hopes they can hold the activists at bay and complete the modernisation.

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