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As the struggling Tories convenes in its conference city for its annual party conference, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its future direction. It’s not even clear if a road forward remains open. These are challenging circumstances for a political party that now has little, if anything, new or unique to say to the electorate.

An Alternate Reality

Things could have turned out vastly better if concrete steps had been made on an policy focus that resonates with people nationwide: Social mobility. Yet the previous administration hadn’t got the basic understanding on how to turn the popular slogan on social mobility into concrete action. During the initial period after the general election, it debated what the phrase actually signified.

It seemed strange to me, because I had previously explained to Johnson what social mobility meant when we initially discussed about it during his leadership campaign. The expression was language I created and used at the Department for Education to talk about life chances. This became our core mission, and its meaning is unambiguous: levelling up is the method by which we achieve equal access – not through reducing chances away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by providing opportunities to those that lack them.

The Core Concept

An additional vital ministry expression we used, “ability is distributed uniformly throughout the nation, but opportunity is not”, served as a intentional wording, embodying the dual components of a equal opportunity plan. First, ability distributed uniformly but not cultivated evenly through our education system. Second, chances not distributed fairly by the private sector or our economic system. Thus, schools and companies were essential to achieving better life chances. This was an priority about the social fabric of our country – fostering human talent and linking them with opportunities.

The Actual Outcome

What did levelling up become under the Tory administration? A towns fund administered out of the the relevant ministry. Decorative floral displays and rearranged intersections. A government strategy was published nearly three years after the Prime Minister took office, which saw current strategies relabelled under the recently branded agenda.

Therefore, a broader social mobility agenda went unpursued, as well as all the change that it may have generated – in funding, business, financial planning, taxation and in place-making. Additionally, in learning, including a tertiary education that has become a target for politicians of all stripes – even though it remains the strongest driver of life improvement for young working-class people, including myself, this country has had in recent decades. Perhaps the primary source of social mobility, functioning widely.

Why Hope Matters

Aspiration is crucial for our country to succeed. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a credible sense that dedication and outcome are linked; that if people aspire, they can achieve. For any government, being able to create a outlook of positivity about the years ahead is critical. Research by the Institute for Policy Research at the academic establishment and others, recently released, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I launched while in office – locally targeted strategies to enhancing learning results – led to students in those neighborhoods being up to a significant margin more hopeful about their prospects than those in equivalent locations without these initiatives in place. The evidence is clear: just making an genuine beginning on fair opportunity strategies can rapidly and effectively change how people feel about their prospects.

Lost Potential

Ignoring this evidence, and in the middle of its new leader election, in September 2022, the Conservative government ended the initiatives. Why would anyone in those regions vote for a political group that took that action? The opportunity areas policy is a single instance of what could have been a game-changing Tory policy platform on social mobility, but that opportunity was totally misused. Strategies such as this can create belief and drive. In contrast, as the Tories learned, reneging on commitments of social mobility is the biggest blunder any leadership can make. The public penalized the government for its ineffectiveness but, perhaps most of all, for its broken promises on social mobility.

Present Circumstances

At present the mandate on social mobility and equality of opportunity has been taken up by a new administration. The old slogan has been discarded. The current administration has its own policy language of “eliminating hurdles to advancement”. The organization that is steadily supplanting the hapless Tories, Reform UK, also has its own message – “economic renewal”. It’s a phrase to talk about additional chances in areas like the one I grew up in, in my hometown. It promises that an historical manufacturing base can reincarnate into an modern manufacturing sector.

To the electorate, it must appear as a déjà vu experience. Similar challenge, new terminology. Yet, currently, little improvement.

What Must Change

If Labour and Reform UK want to escape the similar destiny, each group should learn from the Tories’ mistakes on levelling up; that fair chance language is one thing, but actual achievement of fairer outcomes is significantly more difficult. The UK’s endemically weak life chances remains the key issue for our country, with youth unable to get a decent career start, those putting in effort in employment with minimal progress 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.

Politicians can mention fairer opportunities as much as they want. Yet where is the political group that has the comprehensive policy agenda on life chances? None appear to exist. The first to achieve this, wins. Not only for themselves, but, more importantly, for a whole country that has never needed fair chances so desperately.