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While 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. Doubt remains if a road forward is available. We are in tough times for a political party that now has very little, if anything, new or unique to say to the electorate.

An Alternate Reality

The situation might have been markedly improved if tangible progress had been made on an priority that matters to people nationwide: Social mobility. Yet the former leadership hadn’t got the basic understanding on how to transform the popular slogan on levelling up into policy reality. Over twenty-four months after the 2019 election, it discussed what the phrase actually signified.

I found it bizarre, because I’d already told the Prime Minister what social mobility meant when we originally talked about it during the contest for party leader. The phrase was a term I developed and used at the education ministry to talk about life chances. It was our core mission, and its meaning is unambiguous: levelling up is the approach by which we achieve equality of opportunity – not through reducing opportunity away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by expanding chances to those that don’t.

The Core Concept

Another crucial DfE phrase we used, “talent is spread evenly around the UK, however access isn’t”, again was a deliberate expression, reflecting the dual components of a fairness agenda. First, potential shared equally but not developed consistently through our education system. Second, opportunities not spread evenly by businesses or our economic system. Therefore, learning and employment were essential to achieving stronger social mobility. This was an priority about the community framework of our country – investing in individual capabilities and linking them with chances.

What Levelling Up Became

What did the social mobility agenda turn into under the previous government? Local investment schemes administered out of the DLUHC. Decorative floral displays and rearranged intersections. A government strategy was launched nearly three years after the leadership change, which saw current strategies repackaged under the fresh social mobility slogan.

As a result, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went undeveloped, as well as all the reform that it could have inspired – in funding, commerce, economic policy, tax and in local regeneration. Additionally, in schooling, including a tertiary education that has become a scapegoat for elected officials – despite the fact that it remains the primary vehicle of social mobility for individuals from less privileged homes, including myself, this country has had over the past 30 years. Maybe the primary source of equal opportunity, operating at scale.

The Importance of Aspiration

Hope is vital for our country to prosper. To foster ambition, there needs to be a credible sense that dedication and outcome are connected; that if people aspire, they can succeed. For all administrations, being able to create a feeling of hope about the tomorrow is important. Research by the research body at Bath University and others, published last month, showed that the DfE’s 12 “opportunity areas” I established during my tenure – place-based approaches to boosting academic achievement – led to young people in those areas being up to nearly one-fifth more optimistic about their prospects than those in similar areas without these programmes in place. The evidence is clear: just making an authentic start on equal chance initiatives can quickly and positively change how people perceive their destiny.

Lost Potential

Unaware of these findings, and in the throes of its new leader election, in autumn 2022, the Tory administration ended the initiatives. What reason would someone in those areas vote for a organization that did that? The opportunity areas policy is one example of what could have been a revolutionary Conservative government agenda on social mobility, but that possibility was completely wasted. Strategies such as this can create belief and drive. Conversely, as the Conservatives found out, reneging on commitments of equal opportunity is the most expensive error any political party can make. The electorate held accountable the administration for its incompetence but, perhaps most of all, for its unfulfilled commitments on levelling up.

The Current Landscape

Now the mandate on equal opportunity and equality of opportunity has been transferred to a opposition party. The previous terminology has been abandoned. Labour has its own political rhetoric of “eliminating hurdles to advancement”. The party that is steadily supplanting the failing incumbents, the challenger, also has its own terminology – “reindustrialisation”. The terminology to talk about additional chances in regions like the one I come from, in my hometown. It promises that an historical manufacturing base can be reborn into an modern manufacturing sector.

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

What Must Change

If Labour and Reform UK want to escape the same fate, the respective organizations should understand the Conservatives’ failure on social mobility; that fair chance language is one thing, but successful delivery of fairer outcomes is far more challenging. Our nation’s persistently low equal opportunity remains the primary challenge for our country, with young people unable to get a decent career start, those laboring in occupations with little to show after the living expenses are met, and citizens throughout the UK without any real hope their children will be able to do advance in life than they have.

Politicians can talk about equal chances however much they like. However, which party has the political group that has the complete plan on social mobility? None appear to exist. Whoever gets there first, prevails. Not only for themselves, but, significantly, for a whole country that has never needed equal access so desperately.