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While the struggling Conservative party convenes in Manchester for its annual party conference, it has much to ponder regarding its next steps. There is uncertainty if a clear direction remains open. These are challenging circumstances for a governing group that now has little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the public.

What Could Have Been

Things could have turned out markedly improved if concrete steps had been made on an agenda that matters to people across the country: Levelling up. However the previous administration did not possess the slightest idea on how to turn the popular slogan on social mobility into concrete action. For the two years after the 2019 election, it discussed what the term even meant.

I was perplexed, because I’d already told Johnson what social mobility meant when we originally talked about it during his leadership campaign. This terminology was language I created and used at the Department for Education to talk about life chances. It served as our guiding principle, and its purpose is unambiguous: social mobility is the means by which we attain fair chances – not by taking prospects away from those who possess it, but rather by extending opportunities to those that are without.

The Core Concept

Another crucial education department term we used, “talent is spread evenly across our country, but opportunity is not”, served as a intentional wording, reflecting the two parts of a equal opportunity plan. First, potential shared equally but not nurtured uniformly through our learning institutions. Second, opportunities not spread evenly by employers or our economic system. Therefore, education and business were essential to achieving better life chances. This represented an agenda about the societal structure of our country – investing in people’s potential and providing access to chances.

The Actual Outcome

What did the social mobility agenda evolve into under the Tory administration? Local investment schemes administered out of the the relevant ministry. Street beautification and redeveloped traffic systems. An official policy document was released nearly three years after Johnson became leader, which saw ongoing initiatives relabelled under the fresh social mobility slogan.

Therefore, a wider fairness strategy went ignored, as well as all the improvement that it may have generated – in capital, enterprise, economic policy, tax and in local regeneration. Moreover, in learning, including a tertiary education that has become a punchbag for elected officials – despite the fact that it remains the most powerful engine of social mobility for young working-class people, including myself, this country has had in recent decades. Maybe the sole mechanism of fair chances, functioning widely.

Why Hope Matters

Ambition is crucial for our country to prosper. To foster ambition, there needs to be a realistic expectation that dedication and outcome are linked; that if people aspire, they can attain. For political leadership, being able to foster a outlook of positivity about the future is crucial. Research 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 – locally targeted strategies to boosting academic achievement – led to young people in those communities being up to nearly one-fifth more hopeful about their prospects than those in comparable communities without these programmes in place. The research confirms: just making an genuine beginning on fair opportunity strategies can rapidly and effectively change how people perceive their destiny.

Squandered Chances

Unaware of these findings, and in the throes of its new leader election, in autumn 2022, the Tory administration closed opportunity areas down. Why should any person in those regions vote for a party that took that action? This specific initiative is a clear case of what might have become a game-changing administration strategy on levelling up, but that opportunity was hopelessly squandered. Approaches such as this can generate optimism and ambition. Conversely, as the Conservatives found out, reneging on commitments of social mobility is the biggest blunder any government can make. Voters penalized the government for its ineffectiveness but, above all, for its broken promises on social mobility.

The Current Landscape

Now the mandate on life chances and fair access has been transferred to a opposition party. The levelling up rhetoric has been cast off. The current administration has its own public messaging of “removing obstacles to success”. The political group that is steadily supplanting the failing Tories, Reform UK, also has its own terminology – “reindustrialisation”. This expression to talk about fresh prospects in communities like the one I come from, in the region. It promises that an former economic strength can revive into an revitalized economy.

For the public, it must feel like a Groundhog Day-style loop. Same issue, alternative phrasing. But – as yet – no results.

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 one thing, but actual achievement of fairer outcomes is far more challenging. Our nation’s endemically weak equal opportunity remains the primary challenge for our country, with youth unable to get a decent career start, those putting in effort in occupations with little to show after the living expenses are met, and citizens throughout the UK without any real hope their next generation will be able to do improve in life than they have.

Leaders can mention fairer opportunities however much they like. However, which party has the party that has the thorough strategy on social mobility? I observe no such party. Whichever party succeeds initially, succeeds. Not just for their party, but, crucially, for a complete society that has never needed equal access so desperately.