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As the struggling Tories gathers in its conference city for its annual party conference, it has much to ponder regarding its future direction. It’s not even clear if a road forward is available. These are challenging circumstances for a governing group that now has almost nothing, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the electorate.

What Could Have Been

The situation might have been so different if concrete steps had been made on an agenda that matters to people across the country: Levelling up. But the previous administration did not possess the first clue on how to turn the popular slogan on social mobility into policy reality. For the two years after the 2019 election, it argued over what the concept truly represented.

I found it bizarre, because I’d already told the Prime Minister what social mobility entailed when we originally talked about it during his leadership campaign. The expression was a term I developed and used at the Department for Education to talk about life chances. This became our core mission, and its purpose is unambiguous: social mobility is the means by which we realize fair chances – without removing opportunity away from those who possess it, but rather by extending chances to those that are without.

The Core Concept

Another crucial ministry expression we used, “ability is distributed uniformly around the UK, but opportunity is not”, served as a deliberate expression, reflecting the two parts of a fairness agenda. Initially, ability distributed uniformly but not developed consistently through our learning institutions. Additionally, chances not distributed fairly by the private sector or our market. As a result, learning and employment were essential to achieving stronger social mobility. This represented an priority about the societal structure of our country – supporting individual capabilities and connecting them to prospects.

The Reality of Implementation

How did the social mobility agenda become under Johnson’s Conservatives? Local investment schemes administered out of the DLUHC. Decorative floral displays and redeveloped traffic systems. An official policy document was released nearly three years after the leadership change, which saw current strategies relabelled under the recently branded agenda.

Therefore, a wider fairness strategy went undeveloped, as well as all the improvement that it could have inspired – in funding, business, economic policy, tax and in local regeneration. Additionally, in learning, including a university system that has become a scapegoat for politicians of all stripes – although it remains the strongest driver of life improvement for youth from modest backgrounds, personally, this country has had throughout modern times. Possibly the sole mechanism of social mobility, working extensively.

The Importance of Aspiration

Hope is essential for our country to prosper. For hope to exist, there needs to be a realistic expectation that dedication and outcome are connected; that if people aim high, they can attain. For all administrations, being able to foster a feeling of hope about the tomorrow is important. Studies by the Institute for Policy Research at Bath University and others, recently released, showed that the ministry’s focus zones I introduced as education secretary – locally targeted strategies to improving education outcomes – led to young people in those communities being up to 18 percentage points more hopeful about their future than those in equivalent locations without these schemes in place. The data shows: just making an genuine beginning on pro-social mobility policy can quickly and positively change how people feel about their prospects.

Missed Opportunities

Unaware of these findings, and in the throes of its new leader election, in autumn 2022, the Tory administration terminated the programmes. Why should any person in those areas vote for a political group that made that decision? This specific initiative is a single instance of what could have been a revolutionary Tory policy platform on social mobility, but that possibility was hopelessly squandered. Approaches such as this can generate optimism and ambition. In contrast, as the Conservatives found out, failing to deliver of fair chances is the most expensive error any political party can make. The public held accountable the government for its failure but, primarily, for its unfulfilled commitments on equal opportunity.

The Current Landscape

Now the mandate on life chances and equality of opportunity has been transferred to a Labour government. The previous terminology has been discarded. The current administration has its own public messaging of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The party that is steadily supplanting the failing Conservative party, the alternative party, also has its own terminology – “industrial revival”. The terminology to talk about fresh prospects in communities like the one I grew up in, in South Yorkshire. It claims that an industrial past can revive into an revitalized economy.

For the public, it must feel like a repetitive cycle. Same issue, alternative phrasing. But – as yet – no results.

What Must Change

Whether the government and opposition want to avoid the same fate, each group should understand the Tories’ mistakes on levelling up; that social mobility rhetoric is easy to say, but successful delivery of improved opportunities is much harder. Britain’s endemically weak equal opportunity remains the key issue for our country, with the next generation unable to get a proper professional launch, those laboring in employment with little to show after the living expenses are met, and individuals nationwide without any actual expectation their offspring will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Elected officials can talk about equal chances however much they like. However, which party has the political group that has the complete plan on equal opportunity? None appear to exist. Whichever party succeeds initially, prevails. Not only for their party, but, crucially, for a complete society that has urgently needs equality of opportunity so badly.