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While the struggling Tories meets in its conference city for its annual party conference, it has much to ponder regarding its path forward. There is uncertainty if a viable path is available. These are difficult days for a governing group that now has little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the electorate.

An Alternate Reality

Things could have turned out so different if concrete steps had been made on an agenda that resonates with people throughout the UK: Social mobility. However the former leadership hadn’t got the first clue on how to transform the trendy talk on social mobility into concrete action. Over twenty-four months after the 2019 election, it debated what the phrase even meant.

I was perplexed, because I had previously explained to Johnson what social mobility signified when we initially discussed about it during his leadership campaign. The expression was a concept I originated and used at the DfE to talk about equal opportunity. It served as our departmental mantra, and its purpose is straightforward: social mobility is the method by which we achieve fair chances – not through reducing opportunity away from those who already have it, but rather by extending options to those that are without.

Fundamental Idea

The other key DfE phrase we used, “potential is equally shared throughout the nation, however access isn’t”, served as a purposeful phrase, embodying the two parts of a fairness agenda. Initially, talent spread evenly but not nurtured uniformly through our education system. Furthermore, 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 priority about the social fabric of our country – investing in individual capabilities and connecting them to opportunities.

What Levelling Up Became

What did levelling up evolve into under the Tory administration? Regional development money administered out of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Hanging baskets and rearranged intersections. A white paper was published a significant period after the Prime Minister took office, which saw existing policy approaches rebadged under the recently branded agenda.

As a result, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went ignored, as well as all the improvement that it might have driven – in capital, business, financial planning, tax and in community development. Moreover, in learning, including a university system that has become a target for leaders across parties – despite the fact that it remains the strongest driver of social mobility for young working-class people, personally, this country has had throughout modern times. Perhaps the primary source of fair chances, operating at scale.

The Importance of Aspiration

Aspiration is crucial for our country to thrive. To foster ambition, there needs to be a believable feeling that dedication and outcome are connected; that if people dream big, they can succeed. For all administrations, being able to foster a sense of optimism about the future is important. Studies by the Institute for Policy Research at Bath University and others, recently released, showed that the DfE’s 12 “opportunity areas” I established during my tenure – locally targeted strategies to boosting academic achievement – led to young people in those neighborhoods being up to a significant margin more hopeful about their future than those in equivalent locations without these programmes in place. The data shows: just making an authentic start on equal chance initiatives can rapidly and effectively change how people feel about their destiny.

Squandered Chances

Unaware of these findings, and in the middle of its new leader election, in autumn 2022, the Conservative government ended the initiatives. Why would anyone in those communities vote for a political group that did that? The opportunity areas policy is a clear case of what had the potential to be a revolutionary Conservative government agenda on levelling up, but that opportunity was hopelessly squandered. Approaches such as this can generate optimism and ambition. On the other hand, as the ruling party found out, breaking the promise of equal opportunity is the biggest blunder any government can make. The electorate penalized the leadership for its incompetence but, primarily, for its failed pledges on levelling up.

Today’s Political Reality

At present the mandate on social mobility and equality of opportunity has been taken up by a opposition party. The levelling up rhetoric has been cast off. The new government has its own political rhetoric of “eliminating hurdles to advancement”. The political group that is gradually replacing the hapless Tories, the alternative party, also has its own language – “economic renewal”. The terminology to talk about additional chances in areas like the one I come from, in South Yorkshire. It promises that an historical manufacturing base can revive into an industrial future.

To the electorate, it must feel like a déjà vu experience. Identical problem, new terminology. However, so far, no progress.

What Must Change

If Labour and Reform UK want to escape the similar destiny, both these parties should learn from the Conservatives’ failure on social mobility; that social mobility rhetoric is easy to say, but actual achievement of improved opportunities is much harder. The UK’s chronically poor social mobility remains the primary challenge for our country, with young people unable to get a good job beginning, those laboring in employment with few results after the rent has been paid, and citizens throughout the UK without any actual expectation their offspring will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Elected officials can discuss equal chances repeatedly. Yet where is the political group that has the complete plan on life chances? None appear to exist. The first to achieve this, succeeds. Not just for their organization, but, more importantly, for a complete society that has never needed equality of opportunity so desperately.