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While the struggling Conservative party meets in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its next steps. It’s not even clear if a viable path 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 electorate.

What Could Have Been

The situation might have been vastly better if concrete steps had been made on an agenda that matters to people nationwide: Social mobility. However the previous administration did not possess the basic understanding on how to transform the popular slogan on levelling up into actual implementation. During the initial period after the general election, it discussed what the term truly represented.

It seemed strange to me, because I had clearly defined for Johnson what levelling up signified when we initially discussed about it during his leadership campaign. This terminology was a concept I originated and used at the DfE to talk about social mobility. It served as our departmental mantra, and its purpose is unambiguous: levelling up is the means by which we achieve equal access – without removing prospects away from those who possess it, but rather by expanding chances to those that lack them.

Essential Principle

An additional vital DfE phrase we used, “ability is distributed uniformly throughout the nation, however access isn’t”, served as a deliberate expression, reflecting the two parts of a equal opportunity plan. Initially, talent spread evenly but not cultivated evenly through our education system. Second, access not provided uniformly by employers or our economic system. Thus, education and business were key to achieving improved equality of opportunity. This constituted an priority about the community framework of our country – fostering human talent and connecting them to chances.

The Reality of Implementation

What did the social mobility agenda evolve into under Johnson’s Conservatives? A towns fund overseen from the the relevant ministry. Street beautification and redeveloped traffic systems. An official policy document was published nearly three years after the Prime Minister took office, which saw existing policy approaches rebadged under the fresh social mobility slogan.

Therefore, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went ignored, as well as all the reform that it may have generated – in capital, enterprise, financial planning, revenue and in local regeneration. Additionally, in learning, including a university system that has become a scapegoat for leaders across parties – even though it remains the strongest driver of social mobility for individuals from less privileged homes, including myself, this country has had over the past 30 years. Possibly the only engine of equal opportunity, working extensively.

Why Hope Matters

Aspiration is vital for our country to thrive. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a credible sense that effort and reward are related; that if people aim high, they can attain. For any government, being able to create a outlook of positivity about the tomorrow is important. Studies by the research body at the university and others, newly available, showed that the ministry’s focus zones I launched while in office – place-based approaches to boosting academic achievement – led to youth in those communities being up to nearly one-fifth more positive about their prospects than those in comparable communities without these programmes in place. The evidence is clear: just making an authentic start on equal chance initiatives can quickly and positively change how people perceive their destiny.

Missed Opportunities

Oblivious to this, and in the middle of its successor selection process, in autumn 2022, the ruling party terminated the programmes. Why would anyone in those communities vote for a political group that made that decision? This specific initiative is one example of what had the potential to be a revolutionary Tory policy platform on social mobility, but that chance was totally misused. Strategies such as this can inspire hope and aspiration. In contrast, as the Tories learned, failing to deliver of equal opportunity is the biggest blunder any political party can make. Voters punished the government for its ineffectiveness but, primarily, for its unfulfilled commitments on equal opportunity.

The Current Landscape

At present the responsibility on social mobility and fair access has been taken up by a opposition party. The previous terminology has been cast off. Labour has its own policy language of “eliminating hurdles to advancement”. The party that is steadily supplanting the struggling incumbents, Reform UK, also has its own terminology – “reindustrialisation”. It’s a phrase to talk about additional chances in communities like the one I come from, in the region. It suggests that an historical manufacturing base can revive into an industrial future.

For voters, it must appear as a déjà vu experience. Identical problem, alternative phrasing. However, so far, no progress.

The Way Forward

If Labour and Reform UK want to escape the identical outcome, each group should understand the Conservatives’ failure on social mobility; that social mobility rhetoric is easy to say, but successful delivery of more equal results is far more challenging. Our nation’s persistently low life chances remains the key issue for our country, with the next generation unable to get a good job beginning, those putting in effort in employment with little to show after the rent has been paid, and people across the country without any actual expectation their next generation will be able to do advance in life than they have.

Politicians can discuss equal chances repeatedly. But where is the party that has the comprehensive policy agenda on equal opportunity? I observe no such party. The first to achieve this, prevails. Not only for themselves, but, significantly, for a complete society that has desperately requires equal access so desperately.