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As the existentially challenged Tories convenes in its conference city for its annual party conference, it has much to ponder regarding its path forward. It’s not even clear if a clear direction is available. These are tough times for a political party that now has almost nothing, if anything, new or unique to say to voters.

The Missed Opportunity

The situation might have been markedly improved if real advances had been made on an priority that matters to people throughout the UK: Social mobility. However the previous administration did not possess the slightest idea on how to transform the trendy talk on social mobility into actual implementation. Over twenty-four months after the 2019 election, it argued over what the term truly represented.

I found it bizarre, because I had clearly defined for Johnson what levelling up entailed when we originally talked about it during his leadership campaign. The phrase was a term I developed and used at the Department for Education to talk about life chances. This became our departmental mantra, and its purpose is clear: social mobility is the method by which we achieve equality of opportunity – not by taking opportunity away from those who possess it, but rather by expanding opportunities to those that lack them.

Fundamental Idea

An additional vital education department term we used, “potential is equally shared throughout the nation, yet chances are not”, again was a deliberate expression, reflecting the two halves of a equal opportunity plan. To begin with, talent spread evenly but not cultivated evenly through our education system. Second, chances not distributed fairly by employers or our market. Therefore, learning and employment were key to achieving improved equality of opportunity. This was an priority about the community framework of our country – supporting individual capabilities and connecting them to prospects.

The Actual Outcome

What did levelling up become under Johnson’s Conservatives? Local investment schemes administered out of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Hanging baskets and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. A white paper was launched a significant period after the leadership change, which saw ongoing initiatives relabelled under the fresh social mobility slogan.

Consequently, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went ignored, as well as all the reform that it may have generated – in investment, commerce, financial planning, tax and in local regeneration. Additionally, in education, including a tertiary education that has become a scapegoat for leaders across parties – even though it remains the strongest driver of life improvement for youth from modest backgrounds, including myself, this country has had throughout modern times. Maybe the sole mechanism of fair chances, functioning widely.

The Role of Ambition

Aspiration is vital for our country to prosper. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a believable feeling that effort and reward are linked; that if people aim high, they can attain. For any government, being able to create a feeling of hope about the tomorrow is crucial. Research 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 improving education outcomes – led to students in those areas being up to 18 percentage points more positive about their prospects than those in equivalent locations without these initiatives in place. The research confirms: just making an sincere effort on pro-social mobility policy can swiftly and beneficially change how people perceive their destiny.

Squandered Chances

Unaware of these findings, and in the midst of its successor selection process, in September 2022, the Conservative government closed opportunity areas down. Why should any person in those areas vote for a party that made that decision? The opportunity areas policy is a clear case of what had the potential to be a revolutionary Tory policy platform on levelling up, but that opportunity was totally misused. Strategies such as this can inspire hope and aspiration. Conversely, as the Tories discovered, breaking the promise of social mobility is the most expensive error any government can make. The public held accountable the government for its ineffectiveness but, perhaps most of all, for its failed pledges on levelling up.

The Current Landscape

Now the responsibility on life chances and equal chances has been taken up by a Labour government. The old slogan has been cast off. The new government has its own political rhetoric of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The party that is gradually replacing the failing incumbents, the challenger, also has its own terminology – “industrial revival”. This expression to talk about additional chances in regions like the one I was raised in, in South Yorkshire. It claims that an historical manufacturing base can revive into an industrial future.

For voters, it must appear as a déjà vu experience. Same issue, new terminology. However, so far, no progress.

Lessons for the Future

If Labour and Reform UK want to prevent the similar destiny, both these parties should learn from the Conservatives’ failure on levelling up; that social mobility rhetoric is one thing, but actual achievement of fairer outcomes is significantly more difficult. Our nation’s chronically poor social mobility remains the primary challenge for our country, with young people unable to get a good job beginning, those laboring in employment with few results after the living expenses are met, and people across the country without any real hope their children will be able to do advance in life than they have.

Politicians can discuss equal chances however much they like. But where is the political group that has the comprehensive policy agenda on life chances? I observe no such party. Whichever party succeeds initially, wins. Not only for their organization, but, significantly, for a complete society that has never needed equality of opportunity so desperately.