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As the existentially challenged Tories convenes in Manchester for its annual party conference, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its next steps. There is uncertainty if a road forward exists at all. We are in tough times for a governing group that now has almost nothing, if anything, new or unique to say to the public.

An Alternate Reality

The situation might have been markedly improved if tangible progress had been made on an policy focus that is important for people throughout the UK: Equal opportunity. Yet the former leadership did not possess the slightest idea on how to turn his zeitgeisty rhetoric on social mobility into policy reality. For the two years after the 2019 election, it debated what the concept actually signified.

I found it bizarre, because I had previously explained to the Prime Minister what levelling up signified when we originally talked about it during his leadership campaign. The expression was a term I developed and used at the DfE to talk about social mobility. It was our departmental mantra, and its meaning is straightforward: levelling up is the method by which we realize equality of opportunity – without removing prospects away from those who possess it, but rather by expanding opportunities to those that lack them.

Fundamental Idea

An additional vital DfE phrase we used, “potential is equally shared across our country, but opportunity is not”, again was a intentional wording, embodying the two parts of a fairness agenda. To begin with, ability distributed uniformly but not cultivated evenly through our learning institutions. Additionally, access not provided uniformly by employers or our market. Thus, schools and companies were essential to achieving better life chances. This constituted an agenda about the societal structure of our country – investing in individual capabilities and linking them with prospects.

The Actual Outcome

What did the social mobility agenda evolve into under Johnson’s Conservatives? Regional development money administered out of the DLUHC. Decorative floral displays and redeveloped traffic systems. A government strategy was released a significant period after the leadership change, which saw ongoing initiatives relabelled under the recently branded agenda.

Therefore, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went unpursued, as well as all the improvement that it might have driven – in funding, business, financial planning, tax and in place-making. And, of course, in schooling, including a higher education sector that has become a target for politicians of all stripes – although it remains the primary vehicle of upward movement for youth from modest backgrounds, personally, this country has had throughout modern times. Possibly the primary source of fair chances, functioning widely.

The Importance of Aspiration

Ambition is essential for our country to succeed. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a credible sense that dedication and outcome are connected; that if people aim high, they can attain. For any government, being able to instil a feeling of hope about the tomorrow is crucial. Analysis by the Institute for Policy Research at Bath University and others, published last month, showed that the ministry’s focus zones I introduced as education secretary – locally targeted strategies to boosting academic achievement – led to students in those communities being up to a significant margin more hopeful about their future than those in similar areas without these programmes in place. The research confirms: just making an sincere effort on pro-social mobility policy can swiftly and beneficially change how people view their prospects.

Missed Opportunities

Unaware of these findings, and in the midst of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in autumn 2022, the Tory administration terminated the programmes. Why should any person in those communities vote for a organization that took that action? This specific initiative is a single instance of what might have become a transformative administration strategy on levelling up, but that possibility was totally misused. Methods such as this can generate optimism and ambition. In contrast, as the Conservatives found out, reneging on commitments of equal opportunity is the most expensive error any leadership can make. The electorate held accountable the leadership for its incompetence but, perhaps most of all, for its failed pledges on equal opportunity.

Present Circumstances

Now the mandate on equal opportunity and equality of opportunity has been taken up by a Labour government. The old slogan has been cast off. Labour has its own public messaging of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The political group that is increasingly displacing the failing Conservative party, Reform UK, also has its own message – “reindustrialisation”. It’s a phrase to talk about new opportunities in communities like the one I was raised in, in South Yorkshire. It promises that an industrial past can be reborn into an modern manufacturing sector.

For the public, it must seem like a déjà vu experience. Same issue, new terminology. But – as yet – no results.

What Must Change

Should the current and alternative parties want to avoid the similar destiny, each group should take lessons from the previous government’s errors on levelling up; that social mobility rhetoric is easy to say, but actual achievement of fairer outcomes is significantly more difficult. The UK’s endemically weak social mobility remains the central problem for our country, with young people unable to get a good job beginning, those laboring in full-time jobs with few results after the rent has been paid, and citizens throughout the UK without any real hope their next generation will be able to do improve in life than they have.

Elected officials can mention fairer opportunities however much they like. However, which party has the organization that has the thorough strategy on social mobility? I observe no such party. Whoever gets there first, prevails. Not only for themselves, but, significantly, for a whole country that has desperately requires fair chances so urgently.