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As the existentially challenged Tories meets in its conference city for its annual party conference, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its next steps. It’s not even clear if a road forward is available. These are challenging circumstances for a political party that now has little, if anything, new or unique to say to the electorate.

An Alternate Reality

It could have been so different if real advances had been made on an policy focus that matters to people throughout the UK: Equal opportunity. Yet the previous administration hadn’t got the first clue on how to transform his zeitgeisty rhetoric on levelling up into concrete action. During the initial period after the 2019 election, it debated what the concept truly represented.

I was perplexed, because I’d already told the Prime Minister what social mobility meant when we first spoke about it during the contest for party leader. This terminology was a term I developed and used at the Department for Education to talk about equal opportunity. It was our core mission, and its purpose is clear: social mobility is the approach by which we realize equal access – not by taking chances away from those who possess it, but rather by providing opportunities to those that are without.

Essential Principle

Another crucial education department term we used, “potential is equally shared across our country, yet chances are not”, served as a deliberate expression, reflecting the dual components of a social mobility strategy. First, potential shared equally but not developed consistently through our learning institutions. Furthermore, opportunities not spread evenly by businesses or our economic system. Thus, learning and employment were crucial to achieving improved equality of opportunity. This constituted an agenda about the community framework of our country – supporting people’s potential and linking them with opportunities.

What Levelling Up Became

What did the social mobility agenda become under Johnson’s Conservatives? Regional development money administered out of the the relevant ministry. Decorative floral displays and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. An official policy document was released almost thirty-six months after the leadership change, which saw existing policy approaches relabelled under the fresh social mobility slogan.

As a result, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went undeveloped, as well as all the improvement that it could have inspired – in funding, commerce, fiscal strategy, tax and in place-making. Additionally, in education, including a higher education sector that has become a scapegoat for elected officials – although it remains the most powerful engine of social mobility for young working-class people, including myself, this country has had throughout modern times. Possibly the primary source of social mobility, functioning widely.

Why Hope Matters

Ambition is crucial for our country to prosper. For hope to exist, there needs to be a believable feeling that effort and reward are connected; that if people dream big, they can attain. For any government, being able to foster a sense of optimism about the years ahead is important. Research by the academic institution at Bath University and others, recently released, showed that the DfE’s 12 “opportunity areas” I established during my tenure – place-based approaches to improving education outcomes – led to youth in those areas being up to a significant margin more positive about their life ahead than those in comparable communities without these schemes in place. The research confirms: just making an authentic start on fair opportunity strategies can rapidly and effectively change how people perceive their prospects.

Missed Opportunities

Oblivious to this, and in the midst of its new leader election, in autumn 2022, the Conservative government terminated the programmes. What reason would someone in those areas vote for a party that made that decision? The opportunity areas policy is a single instance of what might have become a game-changing Conservative government agenda on levelling up, but that opportunity was hopelessly squandered. Strategies such as this can create belief and drive. Conversely, as the ruling party discovered, failing to deliver of equal opportunity is the biggest blunder any government can make. The electorate punished the leadership for its incompetence but, primarily, for its broken promises on social mobility.

Today’s Political Reality

At present the mandate on social mobility and equal chances has been taken up by a new administration. The levelling up rhetoric has been discarded. Labour has its own political rhetoric of “eliminating hurdles to advancement”. The political group that is increasingly displacing the hapless Conservative party, the alternative party, also has its own language – “reindustrialisation”. The terminology to talk about fresh prospects in communities like the one I was raised in, in the region. It suggests that an industrial past can revive into an modern manufacturing sector.

To the electorate, it must feel like a repetitive cycle. Identical problem, alternative phrasing. However, so far, no progress.

Lessons for the Future

If Labour and Reform UK want to escape the similar destiny, the respective organizations should take lessons from the previous government’s errors on social mobility; that fair chance language is easy to say, but effective implementation of improved opportunities is significantly more difficult. Our nation’s persistently low equal opportunity remains the primary challenge for our country, with young people unable to get a good job beginning, those putting in effort in full-time jobs with little to show after the housing costs are covered, and individuals nationwide without any genuine belief their next generation will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Leaders can talk about improved access as much as they want. However, which party has the party that has the complete plan on life chances? I see none. Whoever gets there first, prevails. Not just for themselves, but, more importantly, for a complete society that has never needed fair chances so urgently.