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As the struggling Tories meets in its conference city for its annual party conference, it has plenty to consider regarding its future direction. Doubt remains if a clear direction remains open. These are tough times for a political party that now has little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to voters.

An Alternate Reality

It could have been so different if concrete steps had been made on an policy focus that matters to people across the country: Social mobility. But the previous administration lacked the basic understanding on how to convert the popular slogan on levelling up into concrete action. For the two years after the 2019 election, it discussed what the concept actually signified.

I found it bizarre, because I had clearly defined for the Prime Minister what levelling up 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. This became our core mission, and its meaning is unambiguous: social mobility is the approach by which we attain equal access – not by taking chances away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by providing chances to those that lack them.

Essential Principle

An additional vital DfE phrase we used, “talent is spread evenly around the UK, but opportunity is not”, represented another a purposeful phrase, embodying the two parts of a social mobility strategy. First, ability distributed uniformly but not developed consistently through our education system. Additionally, chances not distributed fairly by the private sector or our market. As a result, schools and companies were crucial to achieving improved equality of opportunity. This was an agenda about the societal structure of our country – supporting people’s potential and connecting them to prospects.

The Actual Outcome

How did levelling up become under the previous government? Regional development money managed by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Street beautification and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. A government strategy was published almost thirty-six months after the leadership change, which saw existing policy approaches repackaged under the recently branded agenda.

Therefore, a wider fairness strategy went ignored, as well as all the improvement that it might have driven – in funding, commerce, economic policy, tax and in local regeneration. Additionally, in education, including a higher education sector that has become a target for politicians of all stripes – although it remains the strongest driver of life improvement for young working-class people, like me, this country has had in recent decades. Maybe the sole mechanism of social mobility, functioning widely.

Why Hope Matters

Ambition is vital for our country to succeed. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a realistic expectation that effort and reward are related; that if people aspire, they can succeed. For political leadership, being able to instil a feeling of hope about the years ahead is crucial. Studies by the research body at the university and others, recently released, showed that the ministry’s focus zones I launched while in office – community-focused methods to improving education outcomes – led to students in those communities being up to a significant margin more optimistic about their life ahead than those in similar areas without these schemes in place. The data shows: just making an genuine beginning on fair opportunity strategies can rapidly and effectively change how people perceive their future.

Squandered Chances

Ignoring this evidence, and in the middle of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in autumn 2022, the Tory administration closed opportunity areas down. What reason would someone in those regions vote for a political group that made that decision? The opportunity areas policy is a single instance of what had the potential to be a revolutionary Tory policy platform on levelling up, but that chance was hopelessly squandered. Methods such as this can inspire hope and aspiration. In contrast, as the Conservatives learned, breaking the promise of equal opportunity is the biggest blunder any political party can make. Voters held accountable the government for its failure but, above all, for its failed pledges on social mobility.

Today’s Political Reality

Currently the baton on equal opportunity and equality of opportunity has been taken up by a Labour government. The levelling up rhetoric has been abandoned. The current administration has its own public messaging of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The political group that is increasingly displacing the failing Conservative party, the challenger, also has its own language – “reindustrialisation”. This expression to talk about new opportunities in areas like the one I grew up in, in the region. It promises that an industrial past can reincarnate into an modern manufacturing sector.

For voters, it must appear as a repetitive cycle. Same issue, alternative phrasing. Yet, currently, little improvement.

Lessons for the Future

If Labour and Reform UK want to escape the similar destiny, both these parties should understand the Conservatives’ failure on social mobility; that social mobility rhetoric is simple terminology, but actual achievement of more equal results is much harder. Our nation’s persistently low life chances remains the primary challenge for our country, with young people unable to get a proper professional launch, those putting in effort in full-time jobs with minimal progress after the rent has been paid, and people across the country without any real hope their children will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Leaders can talk about improved access however much they like. Yet where is the political group that has the comprehensive policy agenda on social mobility? I observe no such party. Whichever party succeeds initially, wins. Not only for their party, but, more importantly, for a complete society that has urgently needs equality of opportunity so badly.