Will a Nationwide customer’s boardroom challenge shake up UK corporate governance?

A decade after Theresa May spoke of radical reform, the mutual faces a bid that is testing the limits of democracy In July 2016, in a canalside conference centre in central Birmingham, Theresa May took the stage for a speech that would formally launch her Tory leadership bid. The home secretary of six years was seen as a safe pair of hands, including by the business community still reeling from the shock result of the Brexit referendum. What business had not banked on, though, was a social reform platform that would see May pledge to rein in corporate Britain and give workers and consumers seats on company boards. “If we are going to have an economy that works for everyone, we are going to need to give people more control of their lives,” she said. “And that means cutting out all the political platitudes about “stakeholder societies” – and doing something radical.” It was a gamble. But while it borrowed from left-leaning models used by other EU states, it echoed the kind of anti-establishment rhetoric that had fuelled the pro-Brexit vote and ultimately led to David Cameron’s resignation as prime minister weeks earlier. Days later, May took Cameron’s job. But her d