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As the struggling Tories gathers in its conference city for its yearly gathering, it has plenty to consider regarding its next steps. It’s not even clear if a road forward is available. We are in tough times for a political party that now has very little, if anything, new or unique to say to the electorate.

The Missed Opportunity

The situation might have been so different if tangible progress had been made on an policy focus that matters to people nationwide: Levelling up. However the previous administration hadn’t got the slightest idea on how to turn his zeitgeisty rhetoric on levelling up into actual implementation. Over twenty-four months after the general election, it argued over what the concept even meant.

I was perplexed, because I had clearly defined for Johnson what levelling up entailed when we originally talked about it during the contest for party leader. The expression was a term I developed and used at the Department for Education to talk about life chances. It served as our guiding principle, and its meaning is unambiguous: levelling up is the approach by which we achieve fair chances – without removing prospects away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by expanding options to those that don’t.

Essential Principle

Another crucial DfE phrase we used, “potential is equally shared across our country, yet chances are not”, represented another a intentional wording, reflecting the dual components of a social mobility strategy. Initially, potential shared equally but not nurtured uniformly through our learning institutions. Additionally, chances not distributed fairly by the private sector or our economic system. As a result, learning and employment were essential to achieving stronger social mobility. This was an agenda about the societal structure of our country – investing in individual capabilities and linking them with chances.

The Reality of Implementation

What did levelling up become under Johnson’s Conservatives? A towns fund managed by the DLUHC. Decorative floral displays and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. A white paper was released almost thirty-six months after Johnson became leader, which saw current strategies relabelled under the new levelling up banner.

Consequently, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went unpursued, as well as all the change that it may have generated – in funding, commerce, fiscal strategy, tax and in community development. Moreover, in learning, including a higher education sector that has become a target for elected officials – despite the fact that it remains the most powerful engine of life improvement for individuals from less privileged homes, like me, this country has had throughout modern times. Maybe the primary source of equal opportunity, functioning widely.

The Importance of Aspiration

Hope is crucial for our country to prosper. For hope to exist, there needs to be a believable feeling that effort and reward are connected; that if people dream big, they can attain. For any government, being able to foster a sense of optimism about the future is important. Research by the research body at the academic establishment and others, newly available, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I established during my tenure – community-focused methods to enhancing learning results – led to youth in those neighborhoods being up to 18 percentage points more positive about their future than those in similar areas without these programmes in place. The data shows: just making an sincere effort on equal chance initiatives can quickly and positively change how people perceive their prospects.

Missed Opportunities

Ignoring this evidence, and in the middle of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in autumn 2022, the Conservative government closed opportunity areas down. Why should any person in those areas vote for a party that made that decision? The targeted programme is a single instance of what might have become a transformative Conservative government agenda on social mobility, but that chance was completely wasted. Strategies such as this can generate optimism and ambition. In contrast, as the Conservatives discovered, reneging on commitments of social mobility is the biggest blunder any political party can make. The public penalized the administration for its incompetence but, primarily, for its unfulfilled commitments on equal opportunity.

Today’s Political Reality

Now the mandate on social mobility and equal chances has passed to a new administration. The old slogan has been discarded. Labour has its own policy language of “eliminating hurdles to advancement”. The organization that is gradually replacing the hapless Conservative party, Reform UK, also has its own terminology – “industrial revival”. This expression to talk about new opportunities in communities like the one I was raised in, in the region. It claims that an industrial past can be reborn into an industrial future.

For the public, it must appear as a Groundhog Day-style loop. Same issue, alternative phrasing. Yet, currently, little improvement.

What Must Change

Should the current and alternative parties want to prevent the same fate, both these parties should take lessons from the previous government’s errors on social mobility; that social mobility rhetoric is one thing, but actual achievement of fairer outcomes is far more challenging. Our nation’s persistently low equal opportunity remains the central problem for our country, with the next generation unable to get a good job beginning, those laboring in occupations with little to show after the rent has been paid, and individuals nationwide without any actual expectation their next generation will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Politicians can mention improved access as much as they want. However, which party has the political group that has the complete plan on social mobility? I observe no such party. Whichever party succeeds initially, wins. Not only for themselves, but, more importantly, for a whole country that has desperately requires equality of opportunity so badly.