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While the struggling Tories meets in its conference city for its annual party conference, it has plenty to consider regarding its path forward. Doubt remains if a road forward is available. These are challenging circumstances for a political party that now has very little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the public.

An Alternate Reality

The situation might have been so different if tangible progress had been made on an agenda that matters to people across the country: Levelling up. Yet the previous administration hadn’t got the first clue on how to convert the trendy talk on social mobility into policy reality. For the two years after the general election, it discussed what the phrase truly represented.

I was perplexed, because I had clearly defined for the Prime Minister what social mobility signified when we initially discussed about it during his leadership campaign. The phrase was a concept I originated and used at the Department for Education to talk about life chances. It served as our departmental mantra, and its purpose is unambiguous: levelling up is the method by which we attain fair chances – not by taking prospects away from those who possess it, but rather by extending chances to those that are without.

Essential Principle

An additional vital education department term we used, “ability is distributed uniformly around the UK, yet chances are not”, served as a purposeful phrase, embodying the two parts of a social mobility strategy. Initially, ability distributed uniformly but not developed consistently through our schools and colleges. Furthermore, opportunities not spread evenly by employers or our economic system. Therefore, schools and companies were essential to achieving stronger social mobility. This represented an agenda about the community framework of our country – investing in people’s potential and linking them with chances.

The Reality of Implementation

How did the social mobility agenda evolve into under Johnson’s Conservatives? Regional development money overseen from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Decorative floral displays and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. A white paper was launched almost thirty-six months after the Prime Minister took office, which saw current strategies rebadged under the recently branded agenda.

Therefore, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went unpursued, as well as all the improvement that it could have inspired – in capital, enterprise, economic policy, tax and in community development. Additionally, in schooling, including a university system that has become a target for leaders across parties – despite the fact that it remains the most powerful engine of social mobility for individuals from less privileged homes, including myself, this country has had in recent decades. Maybe the only engine of fair chances, functioning widely.

Why Hope Matters

Ambition is crucial for our country to succeed. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a realistic expectation that hard work and results are linked; that if people dream big, they can achieve. For all administrations, being able to create a sense of optimism about the years ahead is critical. Studies by the research body at the academic establishment and others, newly available, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I introduced as education secretary – community-focused methods to enhancing learning results – led to youth in those communities being up to a significant margin more hopeful about their prospects than those in comparable communities without these initiatives in place. The evidence is clear: just making an sincere effort on pro-social mobility policy can rapidly and effectively change how people view their prospects.

Lost Potential

Oblivious to this, and in the throes of its successor selection process, in autumn 2022, the Tory administration ended the initiatives. What reason would someone in those areas vote for a party that took that action? The targeted programme is one example of what had the potential to be a revolutionary Conservative government agenda on social mobility, but that opportunity was completely wasted. Approaches such as this can generate optimism and ambition. In contrast, as the Tories discovered, failing to deliver of social mobility is the costliest mistake any leadership can make. The electorate punished the government for its ineffectiveness but, primarily, for its failed pledges on social mobility.

Today’s Political Reality

Now the baton on social mobility and fair access has been transferred to a Labour government. The previous terminology has been abandoned. The current administration has its own policy language of “removing obstacles to success”. The party that is steadily supplanting the struggling incumbents, Reform UK, also has its own message – “reindustrialisation”. This expression to talk about fresh prospects in regions like the one I come from, in South Yorkshire. It claims that an historical manufacturing base can be reborn into an revitalized economy.

For voters, it must appear as a Groundhog Day-style loop. Same issue, different language. However, so far, no progress.

Lessons for the Future

If Labour and Reform UK want to escape the same fate, both these parties should learn from the previous government’s errors on social mobility; that social mobility rhetoric is one thing, but actual achievement of improved opportunities is far more challenging. Britain’s persistently low equal opportunity remains the key issue for our country, with youth unable to get a proper professional launch, those laboring in employment with little to show after the housing costs are covered, and citizens throughout the UK without any genuine belief their offspring will be able to do improve in life than they have.

Elected officials can mention fairer opportunities however much they like. Yet where is the organization that has the comprehensive policy agenda on life chances? I observe no such party. The first to achieve this, prevails. Not only for their organization, but, more importantly, for a entire nation that has never needed equality of opportunity so badly.