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As the beleaguered Conservative party meets in its conference city for its annual party conference, it has much to ponder regarding its next steps. Doubt remains if a road forward remains open. These are difficult days for a governing group that now has almost nothing, if anything, new or unique to say to the electorate.

What Could Have Been

It could have been vastly better if real advances had been made on an priority that is important for people nationwide: Equal opportunity. However the former leadership hadn’t got the first clue on how to convert the trendy talk on social mobility into policy reality. During the initial period after the 2019 election, it argued over what the phrase even meant.

I was perplexed, because I’d already told the Prime Minister 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 Department for Education to talk about equal opportunity. This became our departmental mantra, and its purpose is straightforward: social mobility is the means by which we realize equal access – not by taking opportunity away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by providing opportunities to those that lack them.

The Core Concept

The other key education department term we used, “ability is distributed uniformly around the UK, yet chances are not”, represented another a intentional wording, representing the two halves of a social mobility strategy. To begin with, ability distributed uniformly but not cultivated evenly through our education system. Additionally, access not provided uniformly by employers or our economy. As a result, learning and employment were essential to achieving better life chances. This constituted an mission about the community framework of our country – supporting individual capabilities and linking them with chances.

The Actual Outcome

What did levelling up evolve into under the Tory administration? Regional development money managed by the DLUHC. Hanging baskets and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. A government strategy was released nearly three years after the leadership change, which saw existing policy approaches relabelled under the new levelling up banner.

Therefore, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went ignored, as well as all the improvement that it could have inspired – in funding, business, fiscal strategy, revenue 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 primary vehicle of social mobility for individuals from less privileged homes, like me, this country has had in recent decades. Perhaps the sole mechanism of social mobility, operating at scale.

The Role of Ambition

Ambition is essential 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 dream big, they can succeed. For any government, being able to foster a feeling of hope about the tomorrow is crucial. Research by the Institute for Policy Research at the academic establishment and others, newly available, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I established during my tenure – locally targeted strategies to boosting academic achievement – led to students in those communities being up to a significant margin more optimistic about their prospects than those in similar areas without these schemes in place. The evidence is clear: just making an sincere effort on equal chance initiatives can rapidly and effectively change how people feel about their prospects.

Missed Opportunities

Ignoring this evidence, and in the midst of its successor selection process, in September 2022, the ruling party 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 might have become a transformative administration strategy on social mobility, but that possibility was hopelessly squandered. Strategies such as this can inspire hope and aspiration. On the other hand, as the Conservatives found out, breaking the promise of equal opportunity is the biggest blunder any leadership can make. The public held accountable the leadership for its incompetence but, primarily, for its failed pledges on levelling up.

Today’s Political Reality

Now the responsibility on social mobility and equal chances has been taken up by a opposition party. The old slogan has been cast off. The current administration has its own public messaging of “eliminating hurdles to advancement”. The party that is increasingly displacing the struggling Tories, the challenger, also has its own language – “reindustrialisation”. This expression to talk about new opportunities in regions like the one I come from, in my hometown. It suggests that an industrial past can revive into an industrial future.

For voters, it must seem like a Groundhog Day-style loop. Identical problem, alternative phrasing. Yet, currently, little improvement.

The Way Forward

Whether the government and opposition want to escape the identical outcome, the respective organizations should learn from the previous government’s errors on levelling up; that social mobility rhetoric is one thing, but successful delivery of more equal results is far more challenging. Our nation’s persistently low social mobility remains the key issue for our country, with youth unable to get a proper professional launch, those laboring in employment with little to show after the housing costs are covered, and citizens throughout the UK without any actual expectation their offspring will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Politicians can talk about fairer opportunities as much as they want. But where is the party that has the complete plan on equal opportunity? None appear to exist. Whoever gets there first, prevails. Not just for their organization, but, significantly, for a entire nation that has desperately requires equality of opportunity so urgently.