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As the beleaguered Tories meets in its conference city for its annual party conference, it has plenty to consider regarding its next steps. Doubt remains if a clear direction is available. These are tough times for a governing group that now has very little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to voters.

What Could Have Been

The situation might have been so different if tangible progress had been made on an policy focus that is important for people across the country: Equal opportunity. However the former leadership lacked the basic understanding on how to turn the popular slogan on social mobility into policy reality. Over twenty-four months after the 2019 election, it argued over what the term actually signified.

It seemed strange to me, because I had clearly defined for the Prime Minister what levelling up entailed when we originally talked about it during the contest for party leader. This terminology was language I created and used at the DfE to talk about life chances. It served as our guiding principle, and its definition is unambiguous: social mobility is the method by which we achieve equal access – without removing opportunity away from those who possess it, but rather by expanding options to those that don’t.

The Core Concept

An additional vital ministry expression we used, “ability is distributed uniformly around the UK, however access isn’t”, represented another a deliberate expression, representing the two parts of a equal opportunity plan. Initially, potential shared equally but not nurtured uniformly through our schools and colleges. Furthermore, chances not distributed fairly by the private sector or our market. Therefore, education and business were crucial to achieving stronger social mobility. This was an agenda about the social fabric of our country – fostering people’s potential and linking them with chances.

What Levelling Up Became

How did levelling up become under the Tory administration? A towns fund administered out of the DLUHC. Decorative floral displays and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. A government strategy was published a significant period after the Prime Minister took office, which saw current strategies repackaged under the recently branded agenda.

Therefore, a broader social mobility agenda went unpursued, as well as all the change that it may have generated – in funding, enterprise, fiscal strategy, revenue and in place-making. Moreover, in schooling, including a university system that has become a scapegoat for politicians of all stripes – although it remains the primary vehicle of life improvement for youth from modest backgrounds, including myself, this country has had in recent decades. Perhaps the only engine of equal opportunity, operating at scale.

The Role of Ambition

Hope is crucial for our country to thrive. For hope to exist, there needs to be a realistic expectation that hard work and results are related; that if people dream big, they can succeed. For all administrations, being able to create a sense of optimism about the tomorrow is critical. Studies by the research body at the university and others, recently released, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I launched while in office – place-based approaches to boosting academic achievement – led to youth in those neighborhoods being up to nearly one-fifth more optimistic about their life ahead than those in equivalent locations without these programmes in place. The evidence is clear: just making an genuine beginning on equal chance initiatives can rapidly and effectively change how people feel about their future.

Missed Opportunities

Oblivious to this, and in the throes of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in September 2022, the Tory administration closed opportunity areas down. Why should any person in those communities vote for a political group that did that? The opportunity areas policy is one example of what might have become a revolutionary Tory policy platform on levelling up, but that chance was completely wasted. Methods such as this can inspire hope and aspiration. Conversely, as the Conservatives discovered, reneging on commitments of fair chances is the biggest blunder any government can make. Voters punished the administration for its failure but, above all, for its failed pledges on levelling up.

The Current Landscape

At present the responsibility on social mobility and fair access has been transferred to a Labour government. The levelling up rhetoric has been discarded. The current administration has its own public messaging of “eliminating hurdles to advancement”. The political group that is gradually replacing the struggling Tories, the alternative party, also has its own message – “reindustrialisation”. It’s a phrase to talk about new opportunities in communities like the one I grew up in, in my hometown. It suggests that an industrial past can reincarnate into an industrial future.

To the electorate, it must seem like a Groundhog Day-style loop. Identical problem, alternative phrasing. But – as yet – no results.

The Way Forward

Should the current and alternative parties want to avoid the similar destiny, each group should take lessons from the previous government’s errors on social mobility; that equal opportunity talk is one thing, but successful delivery of more equal results is much harder. The UK’s persistently low equal opportunity remains the key issue for our country, with youth unable to get a good job beginning, those laboring in employment with few results after the living expenses are met, and citizens throughout the UK without any real hope their offspring will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Politicians can talk about fairer opportunities however much they like. However, which party has the party that has the comprehensive policy agenda on life chances? None appear to exist. Whoever gets there first, prevails. Not just for their organization, but, crucially, for a entire nation that has urgently needs equality of opportunity so desperately.