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As the existentially challenged Tories meets in its conference city for its yearly gathering, it has plenty to consider regarding its next steps. It’s not even clear if a clear direction 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.

What Could Have Been

The situation might have been so different if concrete steps had been made on an priority that matters to people throughout the UK: Levelling up. However Boris Johnson’s government hadn’t got 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 debated what the concept truly represented.

It seemed strange to me, because I had previously explained to the Prime Minister what levelling up entailed when we first spoke about it during the contest for party leader. The expression was a concept I originated and used at the education ministry to talk about social mobility. This became our core mission, and its purpose is unambiguous: social mobility is the means by which we attain equality of opportunity – not by taking opportunity away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by providing chances to those that don’t.

Essential Principle

The other key DfE phrase we used, “potential is equally shared across our country, but opportunity is not”, represented another a intentional wording, embodying the two parts of a social mobility strategy. To begin with, talent spread evenly but not nurtured uniformly through our learning institutions. Furthermore, access not provided uniformly by businesses or our market. Thus, learning and employment were crucial to achieving better life chances. This represented an agenda about the societal structure of our country – supporting individual capabilities and linking them with opportunities.

What Levelling Up Became

How did levelling up evolve into under the previous government? Local investment schemes administered out of the DLUHC. Decorative floral displays and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. An official policy document was published a significant period after Johnson became leader, which saw current strategies rebadged under the new levelling up banner.

As a result, a wider fairness strategy went undeveloped, as well as all the reform that it may have generated – in investment, enterprise, financial planning, taxation and in local regeneration. Additionally, in education, including a tertiary education that has become a target for leaders across parties – even though it remains the most powerful engine of social mobility for youth from modest backgrounds, including myself, this country has had in recent decades. Perhaps the only engine of fair chances, operating at scale.

The Importance of Aspiration

Aspiration is vital for our country to succeed. To foster ambition, there needs to be a believable feeling that hard work and results are connected; that if people dream big, they can attain. For political leadership, being able to instil a feeling of hope about the future is crucial. Studies by the academic institution at Bath University and others, published last month, showed that the ministry’s focus zones I launched while in office – locally targeted strategies to boosting academic achievement – led to students in those areas being up to 18 percentage points more optimistic about their prospects than those in similar areas without these schemes in place. The research confirms: just making an sincere effort on pro-social mobility policy can rapidly and effectively change how people perceive their destiny.

Squandered Chances

Ignoring this evidence, and in the middle of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in autumn 2022, the Conservative government closed opportunity areas down. Why would anyone in those regions vote for a organization that did that? The targeted programme is one example of what had the potential to be a transformative Tory policy platform on social mobility, but that possibility was totally misused. Approaches such as this can generate optimism and ambition. Conversely, as the ruling party learned, reneging on commitments of fair chances is the costliest mistake any leadership can make. The electorate held accountable the government for its failure but, perhaps most of all, for its failed pledges on social mobility.

Today’s Political Reality

Currently the responsibility on social mobility and equality of opportunity has passed to a new administration. The previous terminology has been abandoned. The current administration has its own public messaging of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The party that is increasingly displacing the hapless Tories, the challenger, also has its own message – “reindustrialisation”. It’s a phrase to talk about new opportunities in areas like the one I come from, in South Yorkshire. It suggests that an historical manufacturing base can revive into an modern manufacturing sector.

For the public, it must appear as a Groundhog Day-style loop. Same issue, new terminology. Yet, currently, little improvement.

What Must Change

If Labour and Reform UK want to prevent the identical outcome, the respective organizations should take lessons from the Conservatives’ failure on social mobility; that fair chance language is one thing, but actual achievement of more equal results is much harder. Britain’s persistently low social mobility remains the key issue for our country, with the next generation unable to get a decent career start, those laboring in full-time jobs with few results after the housing costs are covered, and citizens throughout the UK without any genuine belief their next generation will be able to do advance in life than they have.

Elected officials can talk about fairer opportunities repeatedly. However, which party has the political group that has the comprehensive policy agenda on equal opportunity? None appear to exist. Whoever gets there first, wins. Not just for their party, but, crucially, for a entire nation that has urgently needs fair chances so desperately.