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While the beleaguered Tories convenes in its conference city for its yearly gathering, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its next steps. It’s not even clear if a road forward remains open. These are tough times for a governing group that now has very little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to voters.

An Alternate Reality

It could have been markedly improved if concrete steps had been made on an priority that resonates with people nationwide: Levelling up. Yet the previous administration did not possess the slightest idea on how to transform the popular slogan on levelling up into concrete action. For the two years after the 2019 election, it discussed what the phrase even meant.

I was perplexed, because I had clearly defined for the Prime Minister what social mobility signified when we originally talked about it during his leadership campaign. The expression was a concept I originated and used at the DfE to talk about social mobility. It was our guiding principle, and its definition is clear: social mobility is the approach by which we realize fair chances – not through reducing chances away from those who already have it, but rather by providing opportunities to those that don’t.

Essential Principle

Another crucial education department term we used, “ability is distributed uniformly throughout the nation, but opportunity is not”, again was a purposeful phrase, reflecting the two parts of a fairness agenda. First, potential shared equally but not developed consistently through our education system. Additionally, chances not distributed fairly by businesses or our economy. Thus, schools and companies were essential to achieving better life chances. This represented an mission about the community framework of our country – supporting individual capabilities and providing access to opportunities.

What Levelling Up Became

How did the social mobility agenda turn into under the Tory administration? Regional development money administered out of the DLUHC. Street beautification and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. A government strategy was published a significant period after the leadership change, which saw ongoing initiatives rebadged under the fresh social mobility slogan.

Therefore, a wider fairness strategy went ignored, as well as all the reform that it may have generated – in investment, commerce, fiscal strategy, taxation and in place-making. Moreover, in schooling, including a tertiary education that has become a scapegoat for leaders across parties – although it remains the most powerful engine of social mobility for young working-class people, including myself, this country has had in recent decades. Possibly the primary source of equal opportunity, operating at scale.

The Role of Ambition

Ambition is vital for our country to prosper. To foster ambition, there needs to be a realistic expectation that hard work and results are related; that if people dream big, they can achieve. For all administrations, being able to instil a outlook of positivity about the future is crucial. Research by the research body at the university and others, published last month, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I established during my tenure – community-focused methods to improving education outcomes – led to students in those communities being up to a significant margin more positive about their prospects than those in comparable communities without these initiatives in place. The evidence is clear: just making an genuine beginning on pro-social mobility policy can swiftly and beneficially change how people view their prospects.

Squandered Chances

Unaware of these findings, and in the midst of its successor selection process, in September 2022, the Tory administration terminated the programmes. What reason would someone in those communities vote for a party that made that decision? The targeted programme is a clear case of what had the potential to be a transformative Conservative government agenda on social mobility, but that chance was totally misused. Methods such as this can generate optimism and ambition. In contrast, as the Tories discovered, reneging on commitments of equal opportunity is the most expensive error any government can make. The public punished the leadership for its failure but, primarily, for its unfulfilled commitments on equal opportunity.

The Current Landscape

Now the mandate on social mobility and equal chances has been taken up by a new administration. The levelling up rhetoric has been cast off. Labour has its own public messaging of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The party that is gradually replacing the struggling Conservative party, Reform UK, also has its own language – “reindustrialisation”. It’s a phrase to talk about fresh prospects in regions like the one I grew up in, in South Yorkshire. It suggests that an former economic strength can revive into an modern manufacturing sector.

For voters, it must appear as a Groundhog Day-style loop. Similar challenge, new terminology. But – as yet – no results.

What Must Change

Whether the government and opposition want to prevent the same fate, each group should learn from the Conservatives’ failure on levelling up; that fair chance language is simple terminology, but effective implementation of improved opportunities is much harder. Britain’s persistently low equal opportunity remains the key issue for our country, with young people unable to get a decent career start, those laboring in employment with little to show after the rent has been paid, and individuals nationwide without any genuine belief their offspring will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Politicians can mention equal chances as much as they want. But where is the party that has the comprehensive policy agenda on life chances? None appear to exist. Whichever party succeeds initially, prevails. Not only for their party, but, more importantly, for a complete society that has desperately requires equality of opportunity so desperately.