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While the existentially challenged Tories meets in its conference city for its yearly gathering, it has plenty to consider regarding its next steps. It’s not even clear if a clear direction exists at all. These are tough times for a governing group that now has very little, if anything, new or unique to say to the electorate.

What Could Have Been

It could have been so different if real advances had been made on an priority that matters to people nationwide: Levelling up. But Boris Johnson’s government hadn’t got the slightest idea on how to transform his zeitgeisty rhetoric on social mobility into policy reality. Over twenty-four months after the 2019 election, it debated what the concept truly represented.

I found it bizarre, because I’d already told Johnson what social mobility signified when we initially discussed about it during his leadership campaign. The expression was language I created and used at the DfE to talk about equal opportunity. This became our core mission, and its meaning is unambiguous: levelling up is the method by which we attain equality of opportunity – not through reducing opportunity away from those who already have it, but rather by expanding options to those that don’t.

Fundamental Idea

The other key education department term we used, “potential is equally shared across our country, yet chances are not”, represented another a deliberate expression, representing the two halves of a equal opportunity plan. First, talent spread evenly but not nurtured uniformly through our education system. Furthermore, access not provided uniformly by businesses or our economic system. Thus, schools and companies were crucial to achieving better life chances. This was an agenda about the societal structure of our country – fostering people’s potential and providing access to prospects.

The Reality of Implementation

How did levelling up become under the previous government? Regional development money managed by the DLUHC. Hanging baskets and redeveloped traffic systems. A white paper was launched a significant period after Johnson became leader, which saw existing policy approaches relabelled under the recently branded agenda.

As a result, a broader social mobility agenda went undeveloped, as well as all the reform that it could have inspired – in investment, enterprise, financial planning, taxation and in community development. Additionally, in learning, including a university system that has become a scapegoat for politicians of all stripes – even though it remains the strongest driver of upward movement for youth from modest backgrounds, like me, this country has had throughout modern times. Possibly the primary source of equal opportunity, working extensively.

The Role of Ambition

Hope is vital for our country to prosper. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a believable feeling that hard work and results are linked; that if people aspire, they can achieve. For all administrations, being able to instil a outlook of positivity about the years ahead is crucial. Analysis by the research body at the academic establishment and others, recently released, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I launched while in office – locally targeted strategies to enhancing learning results – led to youth in those areas being up to 18 percentage points more optimistic about their prospects than those in equivalent locations without these programmes in place. The data shows: just making an authentic start on fair opportunity strategies can swiftly and beneficially change how people perceive their prospects.

Lost Potential

Unaware of these findings, and in the midst of its successor selection process, in September 2022, the Tory administration terminated the programmes. Why should any person in those areas vote for a political group that took that action? This specific initiative is a clear case of what could have been a transformative Conservative government agenda on levelling up, but that opportunity was hopelessly squandered. Approaches such as this can generate optimism and ambition. In contrast, as the Tories discovered, failing to deliver of equal opportunity is the costliest mistake any government can make. The public penalized the government for its failure but, primarily, for its unfulfilled commitments on social mobility.

The Current Landscape

Currently the baton on social mobility and fair access has passed to a Labour government. The old slogan has been discarded. The new government has its own policy language of “eliminating hurdles to advancement”. The organization that is gradually replacing the struggling Tories, the alternative party, also has its own language – “reindustrialisation”. It’s a phrase to talk about additional chances in communities like the one I grew up in, in the region. It promises that an former economic strength can revive into an industrial future.

To the electorate, it must seem like a repetitive cycle. Similar challenge, new terminology. But – as yet – no results.

What Must Change

Whether the government and opposition want to prevent the identical outcome, both these parties should learn from the Conservatives’ failure on levelling up; that fair chance language is simple terminology, but successful delivery of fairer outcomes is far more challenging. Britain’s persistently low social mobility remains the key issue for our country, with youth unable to get a good job beginning, those laboring in occupations with little to show after the living expenses are met, and citizens throughout the UK without any actual expectation their next generation will be able to do improve in life than they have.

Leaders can discuss equal chances as much as they want. Yet where is the party that has the comprehensive policy agenda on life chances? I see none. Whichever party succeeds initially, succeeds. Not only for their organization, but, more importantly, for a complete society that has desperately requires fair chances so desperately.