🔗 Share this article

While the existentially challenged Conservative party convenes in Manchester for its annual party conference, it has plenty to consider regarding its path forward. There is uncertainty if a viable path is available. These are tough times for a governing group that now has almost nothing, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the public.

The Missed Opportunity

It could have been so different if real advances had been made on an agenda that is important for people throughout the UK: Social mobility. However Boris Johnson’s government did not possess the slightest idea on how to turn the trendy talk on levelling up into policy reality. During the initial period after the general election, it discussed what the phrase even meant.

It seemed strange to me, because I’d already told the Prime Minister what social mobility meant when we initially discussed about it during the contest for party leader. The expression was language I created and used at the Department for Education to talk about equal opportunity. It served as our departmental mantra, and its definition is straightforward: levelling up is the means by which we achieve equal access – not by taking prospects away from those who possess it, but rather by expanding opportunities to those that are without.

The Core Concept

An additional vital ministry expression we used, “talent is spread evenly throughout the nation, but opportunity is not”, represented another a intentional wording, embodying the two parts of a equal opportunity plan. To begin with, ability distributed uniformly but not nurtured uniformly through our learning institutions. Furthermore, opportunities not spread evenly by the private sector or our economic system. As a result, schools and companies were key to achieving stronger social mobility. This was an priority about the social fabric of our country – investing in individual capabilities and providing access to chances.

What Levelling Up Became

How did levelling up become under Johnson’s Conservatives? Local investment schemes administered out of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Hanging baskets and redeveloped traffic systems. A government strategy was published a significant period after the leadership change, which saw current strategies repackaged under the new levelling up banner.

As a result, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went ignored, as well as all the change that it could have inspired – in funding, business, economic policy, taxation and in community development. Additionally, in schooling, including a higher education sector that has become a scapegoat for elected officials – although it remains the most powerful engine of upward movement for youth from modest backgrounds, personally, this country has had throughout modern times. Possibly the primary source of social mobility, operating at scale.

The Importance of Aspiration

Hope is vital for our country to succeed. For hope to exist, there needs to be a believable feeling that hard work and results are linked; that if people aspire, they can succeed. For political leadership, being able to create a feeling of hope about the future is important. Studies by the research body at the academic establishment and others, recently released, showed that the ministry’s focus zones I launched while in office – place-based approaches to enhancing learning results – led to youth in those communities being up to a significant margin more optimistic about their life ahead than those in comparable communities without these schemes in place. The research confirms: just making an authentic start on equal chance initiatives can quickly and positively change how people view their prospects.

Lost Potential

Oblivious to this, and in the throes of its successor selection process, in that period, the ruling party closed opportunity areas down. Why would anyone in those regions vote for a political group that did that? The opportunity areas policy is a single instance of what had the potential to be a transformative Conservative government agenda on social mobility, but that opportunity was hopelessly squandered. Methods such as this can generate optimism and ambition. In contrast, as the ruling party found out, reneging on commitments of equal opportunity is the costliest mistake any political party can make. The electorate penalized the administration for its ineffectiveness but, above all, for its failed pledges on social mobility.

Present Circumstances

Currently the mandate on social mobility and fair access has been taken up by a opposition party. The previous terminology has been discarded. The new government has its own policy language of “removing obstacles to success”. The political group that is steadily supplanting the failing incumbents, the alternative party, also has its own language – “reindustrialisation”. It’s a phrase to talk about new opportunities in regions like the one I come from, in South Yorkshire. It promises that an industrial past can revive into an industrial future.

For voters, it must feel like a Groundhog Day-style loop. Identical problem, alternative phrasing. Yet, currently, little improvement.

Lessons for the Future

If Labour and Reform UK want to prevent the identical outcome, each group should take lessons from the Tories’ mistakes on social mobility; that fair chance language is simple terminology, but actual achievement of improved opportunities is much harder. Britain’s chronically poor life chances remains the central problem for our country, with youth unable to get a proper professional launch, those putting in effort in employment with little to show after the rent has been paid, and citizens throughout the UK without any real hope their next generation will be able to do advance in life than they have.

Leaders can discuss equal chances however much they like. Yet where is the party that has the comprehensive policy agenda on life chances? I observe no such party. Whichever party succeeds initially, wins. Not just for themselves, but, more importantly, for a complete society that has never needed equal access so badly.