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As the existentially challenged Conservative party meets in its conference city for its yearly gathering, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its next steps. Doubt remains if a clear direction is available. We are in difficult days for a political party that now has almost nothing, if anything, new or unique to say to the electorate.

The Missed Opportunity

Things could have turned out vastly better if concrete steps had been made on an policy focus that matters to people nationwide: Social mobility. Yet the previous administration did not possess the slightest idea on how to turn the trendy talk on social mobility into policy reality. Over twenty-four months after the 2019 election, it debated what the phrase actually signified.

It seemed strange to me, because I’d already told the Prime Minister what social mobility signified when we initially discussed about it during the contest for party leader. The phrase was a term I developed and used at the DfE to talk about equal opportunity. It served as our guiding principle, and its meaning is clear: social mobility is the method by which we realize equal access – not by taking opportunity away from those who possess it, but rather by extending chances to those that lack them.

The Core Concept

An additional vital education department term we used, “potential is equally shared across our country, yet chances are not”, represented another a intentional wording, representing the two parts of a fairness agenda. Initially, ability distributed uniformly but not developed consistently through our education system. Second, opportunities not spread evenly by employers or our economy. Thus, schools and companies were key to achieving improved equality of opportunity. This represented an mission about the societal structure of our country – supporting individual capabilities and providing access to prospects.

What Levelling Up Became

What did levelling up turn into under the previous government? Regional development money administered out of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Decorative floral displays and rearranged intersections. A white paper was launched a significant period after Johnson became leader, which saw ongoing initiatives rebadged under the new levelling up banner.

Therefore, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went unpursued, as well as all the reform that it could have inspired – in capital, commerce, financial planning, revenue and in local regeneration. And, of course, in education, including a higher education sector that has become a scapegoat for leaders across parties – even though it remains the most powerful engine of social mobility for youth from modest backgrounds, personally, this country has had in recent decades. Possibly the only engine of equal opportunity, working extensively.

The Importance of Aspiration

Hope is vital for our country to succeed. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a believable feeling that hard work and results are related; that if people aspire, they can achieve. For all administrations, being able to instil a sense of optimism about the tomorrow is important. Analysis by the research body at the university and others, recently released, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I established during my tenure – locally targeted strategies to enhancing learning results – led to youth in those neighborhoods being up to nearly one-fifth more positive about their future than those in equivalent locations without these initiatives in place. The evidence is clear: just making an sincere effort on pro-social mobility policy can swiftly and beneficially change how people feel about their future.

Squandered Chances

Ignoring this evidence, and in the throes of its new leader election, in September 2022, the Conservative government terminated the programmes. Why should any person in those areas vote for a party that made that decision? The targeted programme is a clear case of what had the potential to be a revolutionary Tory policy platform on levelling up, but that chance was completely wasted. Approaches such as this can create belief and drive. Conversely, as the Conservatives discovered, breaking the promise of fair chances is the most expensive error any government can make. Voters held accountable the government for its failure but, perhaps most of all, for its unfulfilled commitments on levelling up.

The Current Landscape

At present the responsibility on social mobility and fair access has been transferred to a new administration. The levelling up rhetoric has been cast off. Labour has its own public messaging of “removing obstacles to success”. The organization that is steadily supplanting the struggling Tories, the alternative party, also has its own message – “economic renewal”. It’s a phrase to talk about new opportunities in regions like the one I was raised in, in South Yorkshire. It claims that an industrial past can be reborn into an modern manufacturing sector.

For the public, it must feel like a repetitive cycle. Identical problem, alternative phrasing. But – as yet – no results.

Lessons for the Future

Whether the government and opposition want to escape the identical outcome, the respective organizations should learn from the Tories’ mistakes on social mobility; that social mobility rhetoric is easy to say, but successful delivery of fairer outcomes is much harder. The UK’s endemically weak equal opportunity remains the primary challenge for our country, with youth unable to get a decent career start, those laboring in employment with minimal progress after the housing costs are covered, and individuals nationwide without any real hope their next generation will be able to do improve in life than they have.

Politicians can discuss fairer opportunities however much they like. Yet where is the party that has the comprehensive policy agenda on equal opportunity? None appear to exist. The first to achieve this, prevails. Not only for their party, but, significantly, for a entire nation that has never needed fair chances so desperately.