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As the beleaguered Tories meets in Manchester for its annual party conference, it has plenty to consider regarding its path forward. Doubt remains if a road forward remains open. These are challenging circumstances for a political party that now has little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the electorate.

What Could Have Been

It could have been markedly improved if concrete steps had been made on an priority that resonates with people nationwide: Levelling up. Yet the former leadership hadn’t got the basic understanding on how to transform the trendy talk on levelling up into concrete action. During the initial period after the 2019 election, it debated what the term even meant.

I was perplexed, because I’d already told Johnson what social mobility signified when we first spoke about it during his leadership campaign. The phrase was a concept I originated and used at the education ministry to talk about equal opportunity. This became our core mission, and its meaning is clear: levelling up is the approach by which we achieve fair chances – without removing prospects away from those who possess it, but rather by providing options to those that lack them.

Fundamental Idea

The other key ministry expression we used, “talent is spread evenly across our country, yet chances are not”, served as a purposeful phrase, embodying the dual components of a fairness agenda. Initially, talent spread evenly but not cultivated evenly through our schools and colleges. Furthermore, access not provided uniformly by businesses or our economic system. Thus, education and business were key to achieving better life chances. This represented an agenda about the community framework of our country – fostering individual capabilities and connecting them to chances.

The Reality of Implementation

What did the social mobility agenda become under the previous government? Local investment schemes managed by the the relevant ministry. Hanging baskets and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. A government strategy was launched almost thirty-six months after Johnson became leader, which saw current strategies repackaged under the recently branded agenda.

Consequently, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went ignored, as well as all the change that it may have generated – in investment, commerce, fiscal strategy, taxation and in community development. Additionally, in education, including a university system that has become a punchbag for leaders across parties – despite the fact that it remains the primary vehicle of upward movement for individuals from less privileged homes, personally, this country has had throughout modern times. Maybe the only engine of social mobility, operating at scale.

Why Hope Matters

Aspiration is essential for our country to succeed. To foster ambition, there needs to be a credible sense that effort and reward are linked; that if people aspire, they can succeed. For all administrations, being able to instil a sense of optimism about the tomorrow is important. Analysis by the research body at the academic establishment and others, recently released, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I introduced as education secretary – place-based approaches to enhancing learning results – led to students in those areas being up to nearly one-fifth more hopeful about their life ahead than those in comparable communities without these initiatives in place. The data shows: just making an authentic start on fair opportunity strategies can swiftly and beneficially change how people view their destiny.

Lost Potential

Unaware of these findings, and in the throes of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in autumn 2022, the ruling party ended the initiatives. What reason would someone in those areas vote for a organization that took that action? The targeted programme is a single instance of what might have become a game-changing Conservative government agenda on levelling up, but that chance was completely wasted. Methods such as this can inspire hope and aspiration. On the other hand, as the Conservatives discovered, failing to deliver of social mobility is the costliest mistake any political party can make. Voters punished the administration for its incompetence but, perhaps most of all, for its failed pledges on levelling up.

Today’s Political Reality

Now the mandate on life chances and equality of opportunity has been transferred to a Labour government. The previous terminology has been discarded. The new government has its own policy language of “removing obstacles to success”. The organization that is steadily supplanting the struggling incumbents, the alternative party, also has its own message – “industrial revival”. It’s a phrase to talk about fresh prospects in communities like the one I was raised in, in my hometown. It promises that an former economic strength can reincarnate into an revitalized economy.

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

What Must Change

If Labour and Reform UK want to escape the identical outcome, each group should take lessons from the Conservatives’ failure on social mobility; that social mobility rhetoric is one thing, but successful delivery of fairer outcomes is much harder. Britain’s persistently low equal opportunity remains the key issue for our country, with the next generation unable to get a decent career start, those laboring in occupations with little to show after the living expenses are met, 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 discuss improved access however much they like. Yet where is the party that has the complete plan on life chances? I observe no such party. Whichever party succeeds initially, succeeds. Not just for their party, but, significantly, for a whole country that has urgently needs equality of opportunity so desperately.