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As the beleaguered Conservative party gathers in its conference city for its annual party conference, it has plenty to consider regarding its next steps. There is uncertainty if a viable path remains open. These are tough times for a political party that now has very little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the electorate.

An Alternate Reality

It could have been markedly improved if concrete steps had been made on an policy focus that matters to people across the country: Social mobility. But Boris Johnson’s government did not possess the basic understanding on how to convert the trendy talk on levelling up into actual implementation. For the two years after the 2019 election, it argued over what the term truly represented.

I was perplexed, because I’d already told the Prime Minister what social mobility entailed when we initially discussed about it during his leadership campaign. The expression was language I created and used at the DfE to talk about life chances. It was our guiding principle, and its purpose is clear: levelling up is the method by which we attain fair chances – not through reducing prospects away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by extending options to those that are without.

The Core Concept

An additional vital education department term we used, “ability is distributed uniformly across our country, yet chances are not”, served as a deliberate expression, representing the two halves of a equal opportunity plan. First, talent spread evenly but not nurtured uniformly through our education system. Second, opportunities not spread evenly by the private sector or our economic system. As a result, education and business were key to achieving improved equality of opportunity. This represented an agenda about the societal structure of our country – supporting people’s potential and connecting them to prospects.

What Levelling Up Became

What did the social mobility agenda turn into under the previous government? Regional development money overseen from the DLUHC. Hanging baskets and redeveloped traffic systems. A government strategy was released a significant period after the leadership change, which saw existing policy approaches repackaged under the fresh social mobility slogan.

Therefore, a broader social mobility agenda went undeveloped, as well as all the change that it might have driven – in investment, commerce, fiscal strategy, tax and in community development. Additionally, in education, including a tertiary education that has become a punchbag for elected officials – despite the fact that 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 crucial for our country to prosper. To foster ambition, there needs to be a believable feeling that dedication and outcome are related; that if people aim high, they can attain. For political leadership, being able to instil a outlook of positivity about the future is critical. Analysis by the academic institution at Bath University and others, newly available, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I introduced as education secretary – locally targeted strategies to improving education outcomes – led to young people in those communities being up to nearly one-fifth more positive about their life ahead than those in comparable communities without these programmes in place. The research confirms: just making an authentic start on fair opportunity strategies can swiftly and beneficially change how people feel about their prospects.

Squandered Chances

Unaware of these findings, and in the middle of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in that period, the Conservative government closed opportunity areas down. Why would anyone in those areas vote for a political group that took that action? The opportunity areas policy is a clear case of what had the potential to be a game-changing administration strategy on social mobility, but that opportunity was completely wasted. Approaches such as this can generate optimism and ambition. Conversely, as the Tories discovered, breaking the promise of social mobility is the costliest mistake any government can make. The electorate punished the administration for its ineffectiveness but, above all, for its failed pledges on social mobility.

Today’s Political Reality

At present the responsibility on equal opportunity and equal chances has passed to a Labour government. The old slogan has been cast off. Labour has its own policy language of “removing obstacles to success”. The party that is gradually replacing the struggling Conservative party, Reform UK, 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 claims that an industrial past can reincarnate into an revitalized economy.

For the public, it must appear as a repetitive cycle. Same issue, different language. However, so far, no progress.

What Must Change

Should the current and alternative parties want to prevent the identical outcome, the respective organizations should take lessons from the Conservatives’ failure on levelling up; that fair chance language is simple terminology, but effective implementation of fairer outcomes is significantly more difficult. The UK’s chronically poor life chances remains the central problem for our country, with youth unable to get a proper professional launch, those working hard in occupations with little to show after the rent has been paid, and people across the country without any actual expectation their children will be able to do improve in life than they have.

Elected officials can discuss improved access however much they like. Yet where is the political group that has the thorough strategy on social mobility? None appear to exist. Whoever gets there first, wins. Not only for their party, but, crucially, for a entire nation that has urgently needs fair chances so badly.