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While the beleaguered Conservative party convenes in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has plenty to consider regarding its future direction. Doubt remains if a viable path remains open. These are 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 vastly better if concrete steps had been made on an policy focus that is important for people across the country: Levelling up. But the former leadership lacked the slightest idea on how to convert the popular slogan on social mobility into policy reality. During the initial period after the general election, it argued over what the term even meant.

It seemed strange to me, because I’d already told the Prime Minister what social mobility meant when we first spoke about it during his leadership campaign. The phrase was language I created and used at the DfE to talk about life chances. It served as our guiding principle, and its meaning is straightforward: social mobility is the method by which we achieve equality of opportunity – not by taking chances away from those who already have it, but rather by extending chances to those that don’t.

The Core Concept

The other key ministry expression we used, “talent is spread evenly throughout the nation, but opportunity is not”, again was a deliberate expression, reflecting the two parts of a fairness agenda. Initially, talent spread evenly but not developed consistently through our education system. Furthermore, chances not distributed fairly by employers or our economy. Thus, education and business were crucial to achieving improved equality of opportunity. This was an mission about the societal structure of our country – supporting human talent and providing access to opportunities.

The Reality of Implementation

What did the social mobility agenda become under the Tory administration? Regional development money administered out of the DLUHC. Hanging baskets and rearranged intersections. A white paper was released almost thirty-six months after Johnson became leader, which saw current strategies rebadged under the new levelling up banner.

Therefore, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went ignored, as well as all the change that it may have generated – in investment, commerce, economic policy, revenue and in local regeneration. Additionally, in schooling, including a higher education sector that has become a target for leaders across parties – even though it remains the most powerful engine of life improvement for individuals from less privileged homes, personally, this country has had throughout modern times. Maybe the sole mechanism of social mobility, functioning widely.

The Role of Ambition

Hope is crucial for our country to prosper. For hope to exist, there needs to be a credible sense that effort and reward are related; that if people dream big, they can achieve. For all administrations, being able to create a outlook of positivity about the tomorrow is critical. Analysis by the Institute for Policy Research at the academic establishment and others, published last month, showed that the DfE’s 12 “opportunity areas” I established during my tenure – place-based approaches to enhancing learning results – led to students in those neighborhoods being up to a significant margin more hopeful about their life ahead than those in equivalent locations without these schemes in place. The evidence is clear: just making an genuine beginning on equal chance initiatives can rapidly and effectively change how people perceive their prospects.

Lost Potential

Ignoring this evidence, and in the midst of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in September 2022, the Conservative government ended the initiatives. What reason would someone in those communities vote for a political group that did that? The opportunity areas policy is a single instance of what might have become a transformative administration strategy on levelling up, but that opportunity was totally misused. Methods such as this can inspire hope and aspiration. Conversely, as the ruling party learned, breaking the promise of equal opportunity is the most expensive error any leadership can make. The electorate held accountable the leadership for its incompetence but, above all, for its failed pledges on equal opportunity.

Today’s Political Reality

Now the baton on equal opportunity and equal chances has passed to a Labour government. The previous terminology has been abandoned. The current administration has its own political rhetoric of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The political group that is steadily supplanting the struggling Conservative party, Reform UK, also has its own message – “economic renewal”. The terminology to talk about new opportunities in communities like the one I grew up in, in South Yorkshire. It claims that an industrial past can be reborn into an modern manufacturing sector.

To the electorate, it must appear as a Groundhog Day-style loop. Similar challenge, new terminology. However, so far, no progress.

What Must Change

Should the current and alternative parties want to avoid the identical outcome, the respective organizations should take lessons from the Tories’ mistakes on levelling up; that social mobility rhetoric is simple terminology, but actual achievement of fairer outcomes is much harder. Britain’s chronically poor equal opportunity remains the key issue for our country, with young people unable to get a decent career start, those putting in effort in full-time jobs with minimal progress after the rent has been paid, and individuals nationwide without any real hope their offspring will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Elected officials can mention improved access repeatedly. Yet where is the organization that has the comprehensive policy agenda on life chances? I observe no such party. The first to achieve this, succeeds. Not just for their organization, but, more importantly, for a whole country that has urgently needs equality of opportunity so desperately.