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While the beleaguered Conservative party convenes in its conference city for its annual party conference, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its future direction. It’s not even clear if a clear direction exists at all. We are in challenging circumstances for a governing group that now has almost nothing, if anything, new or unique to say to the public.

An Alternate Reality

The situation might have been markedly improved if real advances had been made on an agenda that matters to people throughout the UK: Equal opportunity. However Boris Johnson’s government lacked the slightest idea on how to convert the popular slogan on levelling up into concrete action. Over twenty-four months after the general election, it debated what the concept truly represented.

I was perplexed, because I had clearly defined for the Prime Minister what social mobility signified when we originally talked about it during his leadership campaign. The expression was language I created and used at the DfE to talk about social mobility. It served as our guiding principle, and its definition is straightforward: levelling up is the approach by which we attain equal access – not through reducing chances away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by extending opportunities to those that don’t.

Essential Principle

The other key DfE phrase we used, “potential is equally shared across our country, however access isn’t”, served as a deliberate expression, reflecting the two parts of a social mobility strategy. First, 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 crucial to achieving better life chances. This was an priority about the community framework of our country – fostering people’s potential and connecting them to prospects.

What Levelling Up Became

How did the social mobility agenda evolve into under Johnson’s Conservatives? A towns fund administered out of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Decorative floral displays and rearranged intersections. A white paper was released a significant period after the leadership change, which saw existing policy approaches relabelled under the fresh social mobility slogan.

As a result, a broader social mobility agenda went unpursued, as well as all the improvement that it might have driven – in funding, commerce, fiscal strategy, revenue and in place-making. Moreover, in education, including a university system that has become a scapegoat for leaders across parties – although it remains the most powerful engine of life improvement for youth from modest backgrounds, including myself, this country has had in recent decades. Perhaps the sole mechanism of social mobility, working extensively.

The Importance of Aspiration

Ambition is vital for our country to prosper. For hope to exist, there needs to be a believable feeling that effort and reward are linked; that if people aim high, they can succeed. For political leadership, being able to foster a sense of optimism about the years ahead is crucial. Research by the research body at Bath University and others, published last month, showed that the DfE’s 12 “opportunity areas” I launched while in office – locally targeted strategies to improving education outcomes – led to youth in those communities being up to 18 percentage points more hopeful about their prospects than those in similar areas without these schemes in place. The data shows: just making an authentic start on fair opportunity strategies can quickly and positively change how people perceive their destiny.

Lost Potential

Oblivious to this, and in the throes of its successor selection process, in autumn 2022, the ruling party terminated the programmes. Why should any person in those areas vote for a party that made that decision? The targeted programme is a clear case of what could have been a revolutionary administration strategy on social mobility, but that opportunity was completely wasted. Approaches such as this can create belief and drive. Conversely, as the Conservatives discovered, breaking the promise of equal opportunity is the biggest blunder any leadership can make. The electorate penalized the leadership for its incompetence but, primarily, for its failed pledges on equal opportunity.

Present Circumstances

At present the responsibility on life chances and fair access has been taken up by a Labour government. The previous terminology has been discarded. Labour has its own policy language of “eliminating hurdles to advancement”. The political group that is steadily supplanting the failing incumbents, the challenger, also has its own terminology – “industrial revival”. It’s a phrase to talk about additional chances in regions like the one I was raised in, in the region. It promises that an industrial past can be reborn into an industrial future.

For voters, it must feel like a repetitive cycle. Identical problem, new terminology. However, so far, no progress.

Lessons for the Future

Whether the government and opposition want to avoid the similar destiny, the respective organizations should understand the Conservatives’ failure on levelling up; that fair chance language is one thing, but actual achievement of more equal results is far more challenging. The UK’s chronically poor life chances remains the key issue for our country, with youth unable to get a decent career start, those working hard in full-time jobs with minimal progress after the living expenses are met, and individuals nationwide without any genuine belief their next generation will be able to do improve in life than they have.

Elected officials can mention equal chances as much as they want. However, which party has the political group that has the complete plan on life chances? I see none. The first to achieve this, succeeds. Not only for themselves, but, significantly, for a entire nation that has desperately requires equality of opportunity so desperately.