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While the struggling Conservative party meets in Manchester for its annual party conference, it has plenty to consider regarding its future direction. Doubt remains if a road forward exists at all. These are tough times for a governing group that now has almost nothing, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the electorate.

An Alternate Reality

Things could have turned out markedly improved if real advances had been made on an policy focus that matters to people throughout the UK: Equal opportunity. However the previous administration lacked the basic understanding on how to convert the trendy talk on levelling up into policy reality. For the two years after the 2019 election, it debated what the concept even meant.

It seemed strange to me, because I had previously explained to Johnson what levelling up meant when we initially discussed about it during his leadership campaign. This terminology was language I created and used at the Department for Education to talk about life chances. It served as our guiding principle, and its meaning is unambiguous: social mobility is the approach by which we attain fair chances – without removing chances away from those who possess it, but rather by expanding opportunities to those that are without.

Fundamental Idea

The other key education department term we used, “talent is spread evenly across our country, but opportunity is not”, represented another a deliberate expression, representing the two halves of a fairness agenda. Initially, ability distributed uniformly but not nurtured uniformly through our education system. Furthermore, access not provided uniformly by employers or our market. Therefore, education and business were essential to achieving better life chances. This constituted an mission about the social fabric of our country – fostering people’s potential and providing access to opportunities.

The Actual Outcome

What did the social mobility agenda become under the Tory administration? A towns fund overseen from the DLUHC. Street beautification and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. An official policy document was released almost thirty-six months after the leadership change, which saw ongoing initiatives relabelled under the fresh social mobility slogan.

Therefore, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went ignored, as well as all the improvement that it might have driven – in investment, enterprise, economic policy, taxation and in local regeneration. Additionally, in education, including a tertiary education that has become a punchbag for elected officials – despite the fact that it remains the most powerful engine of social mobility for individuals from less privileged homes, personally, this country has had in recent decades. Possibly the only engine of equal opportunity, working extensively.

The Importance of Aspiration

Aspiration is vital for our country to succeed. For hope to exist, there needs to be a credible sense that hard work and results are linked; that if people dream big, they can attain. For any government, being able to instil a outlook of positivity about the future is critical. Analysis by the Institute for Policy Research at the academic establishment and others, newly available, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I launched while in office – place-based approaches to enhancing learning results – led to students in those areas being up to 18 percentage points more optimistic about their life ahead than those in comparable communities without these programmes in place. The research confirms: just making an genuine beginning on pro-social mobility policy can rapidly and effectively change how people view their destiny.

Squandered Chances

Unaware of these findings, and in the throes of its successor selection process, in September 2022, the Conservative government closed opportunity areas down. Why would anyone in those areas vote for a party that did that? The targeted programme is a clear case of what could have been a revolutionary administration strategy on levelling up, but that possibility was completely wasted. Approaches such as this can generate optimism and ambition. Conversely, as the ruling party discovered, reneging on commitments of fair chances is the most expensive error any political party can make. The electorate punished the administration for its ineffectiveness but, primarily, for its broken promises on levelling up.

The Current Landscape

Currently the baton on life chances and fair access has been taken up by a opposition party. The old slogan has been cast off. Labour has its own political rhetoric of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The organization that is steadily supplanting the failing Tories, the alternative party, also has its own message – “economic renewal”. The terminology to talk about fresh prospects in areas like the one I grew up in, in South Yorkshire. It promises that an historical manufacturing base can be reborn into an industrial future.

For voters, it must seem like a Groundhog Day-style loop. Identical problem, new terminology. But – as yet – no results.

The Way Forward

Should the current and alternative parties want to escape the same fate, the respective organizations should take lessons from the Tories’ mistakes on levelling up; that equal opportunity talk is one thing, but effective implementation of fairer outcomes is much harder. Britain’s chronically poor social mobility remains the key issue for our country, with young people unable to get a good job beginning, those laboring in occupations with little to show after the rent has been paid, and citizens throughout the UK without any real hope their children will be able to do improve in life than they have.

Politicians can discuss fairer opportunities repeatedly. However, which party has the organization that has the thorough strategy on social mobility? None appear to exist. Whoever gets there first, prevails. Not just for themselves, but, more importantly, for a whole country that has urgently needs equal access so urgently.