🔗 Share this article

While the beleaguered Tories gathers in its conference city for its yearly gathering, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its next steps. Doubt remains if a road forward exists at all. These are tough times for a governing group that now has very little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the electorate.

The Missed Opportunity

It could have been vastly better if real advances had been made on an policy focus that is important for people nationwide: Equal opportunity. However Boris Johnson’s government did not possess the basic understanding on how to turn the trendy talk on levelling up into policy reality. During the initial period after the general election, it argued over what the term actually signified.

I found it bizarre, because I had previously explained to the Prime Minister what levelling up meant when we first spoke about it during the contest for party leader. This terminology was language I created and used at the education ministry to talk about social mobility. It served as our departmental mantra, and its definition is unambiguous: social mobility is the means by which we achieve equality of opportunity – not by taking chances away from those who already have it, but rather by expanding options to those that don’t.

The Core Concept

The other key education department term we used, “potential is equally shared around the UK, but opportunity is not”, again was a intentional wording, reflecting the two parts of a social mobility strategy. To begin with, talent spread evenly but not cultivated evenly through our schools and colleges. Second, chances not distributed fairly by the private sector or our market. Thus, education and business were crucial to achieving stronger social mobility. This was an priority about the societal structure of our country – fostering people’s potential and linking them with opportunities.

The Reality of Implementation

What did levelling up turn into under the previous government? Regional development money managed by the DLUHC. Decorative floral displays and rearranged intersections. An official policy document was published nearly three years after the Prime Minister took office, which saw current strategies repackaged under the fresh social mobility slogan.

Consequently, a broader social mobility agenda went unpursued, as well as all the reform that it might have driven – in capital, commerce, economic policy, revenue and in community development. Additionally, in education, including a higher education sector that has become a scapegoat for leaders across parties – even though it remains the most powerful engine of social mobility for individuals from less privileged homes, like me, this country has had in recent decades. Possibly the sole mechanism of social mobility, working extensively.

The Importance of Aspiration

Ambition is vital for our country to thrive. To foster ambition, there needs to be a realistic expectation that hard work and results are linked; that if people aim high, they can attain. For all administrations, being able to create a outlook of positivity about the tomorrow is critical. Analysis by the academic institution at the university and others, newly available, showed that the ministry’s focus zones I launched while in office – locally targeted strategies to boosting academic achievement – led to youth in those communities being up to 18 percentage points more positive about their prospects than those in similar areas without these initiatives in place. The data shows: just making an genuine beginning on pro-social mobility policy can rapidly and effectively change how people perceive their destiny.

Lost Potential

Oblivious to this, and in the throes of its successor selection process, in September 2022, the Conservative government terminated the programmes. What reason would someone in those communities vote for a organization that did that? The opportunity areas policy is one example of what could have been a revolutionary administration strategy on levelling up, but that possibility was totally misused. Strategies such as this can generate optimism and ambition. In contrast, as the ruling party found out, breaking the promise of fair chances is the costliest mistake any leadership can make. Voters held accountable the leadership for its failure but, above all, for its unfulfilled commitments on equal opportunity.

Today’s Political Reality

Currently the mandate on equal opportunity and fair access has passed to a opposition party. 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 increasingly displacing the struggling Tories, the challenger, also has its own message – “economic renewal”. The terminology to talk about new opportunities in communities like the one I was raised in, in South Yorkshire. It suggests that an historical manufacturing base can reincarnate into an modern manufacturing sector.

To the electorate, it must feel like a repetitive cycle. Same issue, new terminology. However, so far, no progress.

Lessons for the Future

Should the current and alternative parties want to escape the similar destiny, both these parties should take lessons from the Conservatives’ failure on social mobility; that social mobility rhetoric is one thing, but effective implementation of improved opportunities is significantly more difficult. Our nation’s endemically weak social mobility remains the primary challenge for our country, with young people unable to get a good job beginning, those putting in effort in occupations with minimal progress after the rent has been paid, and citizens throughout the UK without any actual expectation their offspring will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Leaders can talk about improved access however much they like. Yet where is the political group that has the comprehensive policy agenda on equal opportunity? I observe no such party. The first to achieve this, wins. Not just for their organization, but, significantly, for a whole country that has urgently needs equal access so urgently.