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While the struggling Tories meets in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has much to ponder regarding its next steps. It’s not even clear if a road forward exists at all. We are in difficult days for a governing group that now has very little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the electorate.

What Could Have Been

The situation might have been vastly better if concrete steps had been made on an priority that matters to people nationwide: Equal opportunity. However Boris Johnson’s government hadn’t got the basic understanding on how to convert the popular slogan on levelling up into policy reality. During the initial period after the general election, it argued over what the concept even meant.

It seemed strange to me, because I had clearly defined for Johnson what social mobility meant when we originally talked about it during his leadership campaign. The phrase was a concept I originated and used at the DfE to talk about life chances. It served as our guiding principle, and its purpose is clear: levelling up is the method by which we attain equal access – without removing prospects away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by providing chances to those that lack them.

Essential Principle

Another crucial DfE phrase we used, “potential is equally shared across our country, but opportunity is not”, served as a deliberate expression, representing the two parts of a social mobility strategy. To begin with, ability distributed uniformly but not developed consistently through our schools and colleges. Additionally, chances not distributed fairly by businesses or our economic system. As a result, schools and companies were essential to achieving improved equality of opportunity. This was an mission about the societal structure of our country – fostering human talent and connecting them to opportunities.

The Actual Outcome

What did the social mobility agenda turn into under the Tory administration? A towns fund managed by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Decorative floral displays and redeveloped traffic systems. An official policy document was published a significant period after the Prime Minister took office, which saw existing policy approaches repackaged under the new levelling up banner.

Consequently, a wider fairness strategy went ignored, as well as all the change that it might have driven – in funding, business, economic policy, tax and in community development. And, of course, in learning, including a tertiary education that has become a target for politicians of all stripes – even though it remains the strongest driver of social mobility for young working-class people, like me, this country has had in recent decades. Perhaps the sole mechanism of equal opportunity, operating at scale.

Why Hope Matters

Aspiration is vital for our country to prosper. For hope to exist, there needs to be a credible sense that hard work and results are connected; that if people aim high, they can attain. For political leadership, being able to foster a sense of optimism about the future is important. Research by the research body at Bath University and others, published last month, showed that the ministry’s focus zones I established during my tenure – locally targeted strategies to enhancing learning results – led to students in those neighborhoods being up to 18 percentage points more positive about their future than those in similar areas without these schemes in place. The evidence is clear: just making an authentic start on pro-social mobility policy can quickly and positively change how people view their future.

Lost Potential

Oblivious to this, and in the midst of its successor selection process, in autumn 2022, the Conservative government terminated the programmes. Why would anyone in those communities vote for a organization that did that? The opportunity areas policy is a clear case of what might have become a transformative Conservative government agenda on levelling up, but that opportunity was hopelessly squandered. Strategies such as this can inspire hope and aspiration. On the other hand, as the Tories found out, breaking the promise of fair chances is the biggest blunder any government can make. The electorate held accountable the government for its incompetence but, perhaps most of all, for its unfulfilled commitments on social mobility.

The Current Landscape

At present the baton on equal opportunity and fair access has been transferred to a opposition party. The previous terminology has been discarded. The current administration has its own public messaging of “removing obstacles to success”. The organization that is gradually replacing the hapless incumbents, the alternative party, also has its own terminology – “reindustrialisation”. It’s a phrase to talk about new opportunities in areas like the one I come from, in my hometown. It claims that an industrial past can be reborn into an industrial future.

For voters, it must appear as a déjà vu experience. Same issue, different language. But – as yet – no results.

Lessons for the Future

Whether the government and opposition want to avoid the identical outcome, each group should take lessons from the previous government’s errors on social mobility; that social mobility rhetoric is one thing, but successful delivery of improved opportunities is significantly more difficult. Our nation’s persistently low social mobility remains the key issue for our country, with the next generation unable to get a good job beginning, those putting in effort in full-time jobs with minimal progress after the housing costs are covered, and people across the country without any actual expectation their offspring will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Politicians can talk about improved access repeatedly. However, which party has the party that has the thorough strategy on equal opportunity? I see none. The first to achieve this, wins. Not only for their organization, but, significantly, for a complete society that has urgently needs equal access so urgently.