As the original author championed social mobility as the critical to Tory success – but the former Prime Minister failed to deliver. Observe the consequences.

While the struggling Tories convenes in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has much to ponder regarding its next steps. It’s not even clear if a viable path exists at all. We are in tough times for a political party that now has very little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the public.

An Alternate Reality

It could have been so different if tangible progress had been made on an agenda that resonates with people across the country: Social mobility. However the former leadership did not possess the basic understanding on how to convert his zeitgeisty rhetoric on social mobility into concrete action. For the two years after the general election, it debated what the phrase actually signified.

It seemed strange to me, because I’d already told the Prime Minister what levelling up entailed when we first spoke about it during the contest for party leader. This terminology was language I created and used at the Department for Education to talk about equal opportunity. It served as our guiding principle, and its definition is unambiguous: social mobility is the means by which we attain fair chances – without removing opportunity away from those who possess it, but rather by extending chances to those that lack them.

Essential Principle

An additional vital DfE phrase we used, “potential is equally shared around the UK, but opportunity is not”, served as a deliberate expression, representing the two parts of a equal opportunity plan. To begin with, talent spread evenly but not developed consistently through our schools and colleges. Furthermore, access not provided uniformly by businesses or our economy. Therefore, schools and companies were crucial to achieving better life chances. This represented an agenda about the societal structure of our country – supporting individual capabilities and linking them with chances.

What Levelling Up Became

How did the social mobility agenda evolve into under the previous government? A towns fund managed by the DLUHC. Street beautification and rearranged intersections. A government strategy was published a significant period after the leadership change, which saw existing policy approaches relabelled under the recently branded agenda.

As a result, a broader social mobility agenda went unpursued, as well as all the improvement that it may have generated – in capital, enterprise, financial planning, tax and in community development. And, of course, in learning, including a higher education sector that has become a punchbag for elected officials – even though it remains the most powerful engine of social mobility for youth from modest backgrounds, personally, this country has had in recent decades. Maybe the primary source of fair chances, operating at scale.

The Importance of Aspiration

Aspiration is essential for our country to prosper. To foster ambition, there needs to be a believable feeling that effort and reward are connected; that if people aim high, they can achieve. For all administrations, being able to foster a sense of optimism about the future is crucial. Analysis by the academic institution at the university and others, recently released, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I launched while in office – community-focused methods to enhancing learning results – led to youth in those neighborhoods being up to nearly one-fifth more optimistic about their future than those in equivalent locations without these programmes in place. The evidence is clear: just making an genuine beginning on pro-social mobility policy can quickly and positively change how people view their prospects.

Lost Potential

Oblivious to this, and in the midst of its successor selection process, in September 2022, the Tory administration closed opportunity areas down. What reason would someone in those regions vote for a political group that made that decision? This specific initiative is a clear case of what had the potential to be a game-changing Conservative government agenda on levelling up, but that possibility was hopelessly squandered. Approaches such as this can generate optimism and ambition. On the other hand, as the ruling party discovered, reneging on commitments of fair chances is the costliest mistake any government can make. The electorate held accountable the leadership for its ineffectiveness but, primarily, for its broken promises on equal opportunity.

Present Circumstances

Now the responsibility on life chances and equality of opportunity has been taken up by a opposition party. The levelling up rhetoric has been discarded. The current administration has its own political rhetoric of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The organization that is increasingly displacing the hapless incumbents, the alternative party, also has its own terminology – “economic renewal”. This expression to talk about fresh prospects in areas like the one I grew up in, in South Yorkshire. It suggests that an former economic strength can reincarnate into an revitalized economy.

To the electorate, it must feel like a Groundhog Day-style loop. Similar challenge, alternative phrasing. Yet, currently, little improvement.

The Way Forward

If Labour and Reform UK want to escape the identical outcome, each group should learn from the previous government’s errors on social mobility; that equal opportunity talk is one thing, but effective implementation of more equal results is far more challenging. The UK’s endemically weak social mobility remains the central problem for our country, with the next generation unable to get a good job beginning, those laboring in occupations with little to show after the living expenses are met, and people across the country without any genuine belief their next generation will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Politicians can discuss improved access repeatedly. But where is the political group that has the comprehensive policy agenda on life chances? I observe no such party. Whichever party succeeds initially, prevails. Not just for themselves, but, significantly, for a entire nation that has never needed equal access so urgently.