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While the beleaguered Conservative party gathers in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its next steps. Doubt remains if a clear direction exists at all. These are tough times for a governing group that now has very little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the public.

The Missed Opportunity

It could have been markedly improved if real advances had been made on an agenda that matters to people nationwide: Social mobility. But Boris Johnson’s government hadn’t got the basic understanding on how to convert the trendy talk on levelling up into concrete action. Over twenty-four months after the 2019 election, it argued over what the term actually signified.

I found it bizarre, because I had previously explained to Johnson what levelling up signified when we initially discussed about it during his leadership campaign. The expression was a term I developed and used at the DfE to talk about life chances. This became our core mission, and its definition is clear: levelling up is the method by which we achieve fair chances – without removing prospects away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by extending opportunities to those that are without.

The Core Concept

The other key education department term we used, “talent is spread evenly throughout the nation, but opportunity is not”, represented another a intentional wording, representing the two parts of a equal opportunity plan. To begin with, ability distributed uniformly but not nurtured uniformly through our education system. Additionally, access not provided uniformly by the private sector or our economy. As a result, 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.

What Levelling Up Became

How did the social mobility agenda evolve into under the previous government? Local investment schemes overseen from the DLUHC. Street beautification and redeveloped traffic systems. An official policy document was published nearly three years after Johnson became leader, which saw existing policy approaches repackaged under the recently branded agenda.

Therefore, a broader social mobility agenda went ignored, as well as all the reform that it could have inspired – in investment, business, fiscal strategy, revenue and in place-making. And, of course, in education, including a university system that has become a target for leaders across parties – even though it remains the primary vehicle of life improvement for individuals from less privileged homes, like me, this country has had in recent decades. Maybe the sole mechanism of equal opportunity, functioning widely.

The Importance of Aspiration

Aspiration is crucial for our country to prosper. To foster ambition, there needs to be a realistic expectation that effort and reward are linked; that if people aim high, they can achieve. For any government, being able to create a outlook of positivity about the future is important. Research by the Institute for Policy Research at Bath University and others, recently released, showed that the ministry’s focus zones I established during my tenure – locally targeted strategies to enhancing learning results – led to young people in those neighborhoods being up to a significant margin more optimistic about their life ahead than those in equivalent locations without these schemes in place. The research confirms: just making an authentic start on equal chance initiatives can rapidly and effectively change how people feel about their prospects.

Squandered Chances

Unaware of these findings, and in the throes of its successor selection process, in autumn 2022, the ruling party closed opportunity areas down. What reason would someone in those communities vote for a political group that took that action? The opportunity areas policy is a clear case of what could have been a game-changing Conservative government agenda on social mobility, but that opportunity was completely wasted. Strategies such as this can inspire hope and aspiration. On the other hand, as the ruling party found out, reneging on commitments of fair chances is the costliest mistake any government can make. Voters punished the administration for its failure but, above all, for its unfulfilled commitments on equal opportunity.

Today’s Political Reality

Now the responsibility on life chances and equal chances has been taken up by a Labour government. The old slogan has been abandoned. Labour has its own public messaging of “removing obstacles to success”. The political group that is gradually replacing the failing incumbents, the alternative party, also has its own language – “economic renewal”. It’s a phrase to talk about new opportunities in areas like the one I was raised in, in South Yorkshire. It promises that an historical manufacturing base can be reborn into an revitalized economy.

For voters, it must seem like a Groundhog Day-style loop. Same issue, different language. But – as yet – no results.

What Must Change

Whether the government and opposition want to avoid the same fate, the respective organizations should understand the Tories’ mistakes on levelling up; that social mobility rhetoric is simple terminology, but actual achievement of fairer outcomes is significantly more difficult. Britain’s chronically poor life chances remains the primary challenge for our country, with the next generation unable to get a decent career start, those working hard in full-time jobs with minimal progress after the housing costs are covered, and citizens throughout the UK without any actual expectation their children will be able to do advance in life than they have.

Elected officials can talk about improved access however much they like. Yet where is the political group that has the complete plan on social mobility? None appear to exist. Whoever gets there first, prevails. Not only for their party, but, significantly, for a complete society that has never needed equality of opportunity so urgently.