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While the struggling Tories convenes in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has much to ponder regarding its next steps. Doubt remains if a viable path is available. These are difficult days for a political party that now has very little, if anything, new or unique to say to the public.

What Could Have Been

Things could have turned out so different if real advances had been made on an priority that matters to people across the country: Levelling up. However Boris Johnson’s government hadn’t got the basic understanding on how to transform the trendy talk on levelling up into policy reality. For the two years after the 2019 election, it argued over what the term even meant.

I was perplexed, because I’d already told the Prime Minister what social mobility meant when we initially discussed about it during his leadership campaign. The expression was language I created and used at the Department for Education to talk about social mobility. It served as our core mission, and its purpose is unambiguous: levelling up is the means by which we achieve equal access – not by taking opportunity away from those who possess it, but rather by expanding opportunities to those that don’t.

The Core Concept

The other key ministry expression we used, “ability is distributed uniformly across our country, however access isn’t”, represented another a purposeful phrase, embodying the two halves of a social mobility strategy. To begin with, potential shared equally but not nurtured uniformly through our schools and colleges. Furthermore, opportunities not spread evenly by the private sector or our economic system. Thus, learning and employment were crucial to achieving improved equality of opportunity. This represented an agenda about the societal structure of our country – investing in individual capabilities and connecting them to chances.

What Levelling Up Became

What did the social mobility agenda turn into under the previous government? Regional development money managed by the DLUHC. Decorative floral displays and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. A white paper was released a significant period after the Prime Minister took office, which saw existing policy approaches relabelled under the fresh social mobility slogan.

Consequently, a wider fairness strategy went ignored, as well as all the reform that it may have generated – in investment, business, financial planning, taxation and in community development. Moreover, in learning, including a university system that has become a scapegoat for elected officials – even though it remains the most powerful engine of social mobility for individuals from less privileged homes, including myself, this country has had throughout modern times. Perhaps the primary source of equal opportunity, operating at scale.

The Importance of Aspiration

Aspiration is crucial for our country to succeed. To foster ambition, there needs to be a credible sense that hard work and results are linked; that if people dream big, they can achieve. For any government, being able to foster a feeling of hope about the tomorrow is critical. Analysis by the academic institution at the university and others, newly available, showed that the DfE’s 12 “opportunity areas” I introduced as education secretary – community-focused methods to enhancing learning results – led to youth in those neighborhoods being up to a significant margin more hopeful about their prospects than those in equivalent locations without these schemes in place. The evidence is clear: just making an genuine beginning on fair opportunity strategies can swiftly and beneficially change how people view their prospects.

Squandered Chances

Unaware of these findings, and in the midst of its new leader election, in September 2022, the Conservative government ended the initiatives. Why should any person in those communities vote for a organization that made that decision? This specific initiative is one example of what could have been a game-changing administration strategy on levelling up, but that chance was completely wasted. Strategies such as this can inspire hope and aspiration. On the other hand, as the Tories discovered, failing to deliver of social mobility is the most expensive error any leadership can make. The public penalized the government for its ineffectiveness but, above all, for its broken promises on equal opportunity.

Today’s Political Reality

Currently the responsibility on social mobility and equal chances has been transferred to a opposition party. The previous terminology has been discarded. Labour has its own political rhetoric of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The party that is gradually replacing the struggling Tories, the challenger, also has its own language – “reindustrialisation”. The terminology to talk about new opportunities in communities like the one I was raised in, in the region. It suggests that an former economic strength can reincarnate into an modern manufacturing sector.

For the public, it must appear as a Groundhog Day-style loop. Same issue, alternative phrasing. However, so far, no progress.

What Must Change

Whether the government and opposition want to escape the same fate, the respective organizations should take lessons from the previous government’s errors on social mobility; that fair chance language is one thing, but effective implementation of improved opportunities is significantly more difficult. Our nation’s endemically weak social mobility remains the primary challenge for our country, with the next generation unable to get a proper professional launch, those laboring in employment with minimal progress after the rent has been paid, and citizens throughout the UK without any real hope their children will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Elected officials can discuss fairer opportunities repeatedly. However, which party has the political group that has the complete plan on life chances? None appear to exist. Whichever party succeeds initially, wins. Not only for themselves, but, more importantly, for a entire nation that has desperately requires equal access so badly.