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While the beleaguered Tories convenes in its conference city for its annual party conference, it has much to ponder regarding its next steps. It’s not even clear if a road forward exists at all. We are in challenging circumstances for a governing group that now has very little, if anything, new or unique to say to the electorate.

An Alternate Reality

The situation might have been so different if tangible progress had been made on an policy focus that matters to people across the country: Social mobility. Yet Boris Johnson’s government did not possess the basic understanding on how to turn the trendy talk on levelling up into policy reality. For the two years after the 2019 election, it discussed what the concept actually signified.

I found it bizarre, because I had clearly defined for Johnson what levelling up signified when we first spoke about it during his leadership campaign. This terminology was language I created and used at the Department for Education to talk about equal opportunity. It was our departmental mantra, and its definition is clear: social mobility is the approach by which we attain equality of opportunity – not by taking prospects away from those who already have it, but rather by extending opportunities to those that lack them.

Fundamental Idea

The other key ministry expression we used, “ability is distributed uniformly across our country, yet chances are not”, served as a intentional wording, embodying the dual components of a social mobility strategy. To begin with, potential shared equally but not developed consistently through our learning institutions. Second, chances not distributed fairly by businesses or our economy. As a result, learning and employment were essential to achieving improved equality of opportunity. This constituted an priority about the social fabric of our country – investing in individual capabilities and linking them with prospects.

The Reality of Implementation

How did levelling up evolve into under the previous government? A towns fund overseen from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Decorative floral displays and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. A white paper was launched nearly three years after Johnson became leader, which saw existing policy approaches rebadged under the new levelling up banner.

Consequently, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went undeveloped, as well as all the improvement that it might have driven – in funding, enterprise, economic policy, taxation and in community development. 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 youth from modest backgrounds, like me, this country has had in recent decades. Maybe the only engine of social mobility, functioning widely.

The Importance of Aspiration

Aspiration is vital for our country to thrive. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a credible sense that effort and reward are connected; that if people aim high, they can achieve. For any government, being able to foster a feeling of hope about the tomorrow is important. Studies by the academic institution at the university and others, published last month, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I established during my tenure – community-focused methods to improving education outcomes – led to students in those communities being up to a significant margin more hopeful about their prospects than those in equivalent locations without these programmes in place. The evidence is clear: just making an sincere effort on equal chance initiatives can rapidly and effectively change how people feel about their destiny.

Missed Opportunities

Oblivious to this, and in the throes of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in autumn 2022, the ruling party ended the initiatives. Why should any person in those regions vote for a organization that made that decision? The targeted programme is a single instance of what might have become a transformative administration strategy on social mobility, but that opportunity was totally misused. Methods such as this can create belief and drive. In contrast, as the Conservatives discovered, reneging on commitments of social mobility is the most expensive error any political party can make. The public punished the administration for its ineffectiveness but, perhaps most of all, for its failed pledges on levelling up.

Present Circumstances

Now the mandate on social mobility and equal chances has been transferred to a new administration. The old slogan has been abandoned. Labour has its own policy language of “eliminating hurdles to advancement”. The party that is steadily supplanting the struggling incumbents, Reform UK, also has its own terminology – “reindustrialisation”. It’s a phrase to talk about new opportunities in communities like the one I come from, in my hometown. It claims that an historical manufacturing base can reincarnate into an industrial future.

For voters, it must feel like a repetitive cycle. Same issue, different language. Yet, currently, little improvement.

What Must Change

Should the current and alternative parties want to escape the similar destiny, both these parties should learn from the previous government’s errors on levelling up; that social mobility rhetoric is easy to say, but successful delivery of more equal results is much harder. Britain’s persistently low life chances remains the key issue for our country, with the next generation unable to get a decent career start, those working hard in occupations with few results after the living expenses are met, and citizens throughout the UK without any genuine belief their next generation will be able to do advance in life than they have.

Leaders can talk about equal chances as much as they want. Yet where is the organization that has the comprehensive policy agenda on equal opportunity? I observe no such party. Whoever gets there first, prevails. Not just for their party, but, significantly, for a whole country that has never needed equality of opportunity so badly.