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While the existentially challenged Tories convenes in Manchester for its annual party conference, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its next steps. Doubt remains if a road forward exists at all. We are in tough times for a political party that now has almost nothing, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the electorate.

An Alternate Reality

It could have been markedly improved if concrete steps had been made on an agenda that matters to people nationwide: Equal opportunity. But the previous administration lacked the slightest idea on how to transform the trendy talk on social mobility into actual implementation. Over twenty-four months after the general election, it argued over what the phrase even meant.

It seemed strange to me, because I had clearly defined for Johnson what levelling up entailed when we first spoke about it during the contest for party leader. This terminology was language I created and used at the Department for Education to talk about equal opportunity. This became our core mission, and its definition is clear: levelling up is the means by which we realize fair chances – without removing opportunity away from those who already have it, but rather by expanding opportunities to those that are without.

Essential Principle

The other key DfE phrase we used, “talent is spread evenly across our country, but opportunity is not”, served as a purposeful phrase, reflecting the two halves of a equal opportunity plan. First, potential shared equally but not developed consistently through our education system. Additionally, chances not distributed fairly by the private sector or our economic system. Therefore, learning and employment were key to achieving better life chances. This was an mission about the societal structure of our country – supporting individual capabilities and connecting them to opportunities.

The Actual Outcome

What did the social mobility agenda turn into under Johnson’s Conservatives? Local investment schemes overseen from the the relevant ministry. Street beautification and rearranged intersections. A government strategy was released a significant period after the leadership change, which saw current strategies relabelled under the recently branded agenda.

Therefore, a wider fairness strategy went undeveloped, as well as all the reform that it may have generated – in investment, commerce, financial planning, taxation and in local regeneration. Additionally, in schooling, including a tertiary education that has become a punchbag for leaders across parties – despite the fact that it remains the most powerful engine of life improvement for individuals from less privileged homes, including myself, this country has had in recent decades. Maybe the primary source of fair chances, working extensively.

The Role of Ambition

Aspiration is crucial for our country to prosper. To foster ambition, there needs to be a believable feeling that effort and reward are related; that if people dream big, they can succeed. For political leadership, being able to create a outlook of positivity about the future is important. Studies by the research body at the academic establishment and others, published last month, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I launched while in office – community-focused methods to improving education outcomes – led to youth in those areas being up to nearly one-fifth more positive about their prospects than those in comparable communities without these programmes in place. The data shows: just making an genuine beginning on pro-social mobility policy can quickly and positively change how people perceive their prospects.

Lost Potential

Ignoring this evidence, and in the throes of its successor selection process, in September 2022, the ruling party closed opportunity areas down. Why should any person in those regions vote for a party that made that decision? The targeted programme is a clear case of what could have been a transformative administration strategy on levelling up, but that possibility was totally misused. Methods such as this can create belief and drive. On the other hand, as the Conservatives found out, reneging on commitments of equal opportunity is the most expensive error any leadership can make. The public held accountable the leadership for its failure but, primarily, for its broken promises on equal opportunity.

The Current Landscape

At present the mandate on social mobility and equality of opportunity has been taken up by a new administration. The levelling up rhetoric has been cast off. Labour has its own policy language of “removing obstacles to success”. The organization that is steadily supplanting the failing incumbents, Reform UK, also has its own message – “reindustrialisation”. The terminology to talk about fresh prospects in areas like the one I come from, in South Yorkshire. It suggests that an industrial past can revive into an industrial future.

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

What Must Change

Whether the government and opposition want to prevent the same fate, the respective organizations should take lessons from the Tories’ mistakes on social mobility; that fair chance language is simple terminology, but actual achievement of fairer outcomes is significantly more difficult. The UK’s chronically poor social mobility remains the central problem for our country, with youth unable to get a good job beginning, those putting in effort in occupations with little to show after the rent has been paid, and people across the country without any real hope their next generation will be able to do advance in life than they have.

Politicians can talk about improved access repeatedly. However, which party has the party that has the comprehensive policy agenda on life chances? I observe no such party. Whoever gets there first, prevails. Not only for their organization, but, crucially, for a complete society that has desperately requires equal access so desperately.