As the original author advocated for equal opportunity as the essential to Tory electoral victory – but Boris Johnson failed to deliver. Now look at us.

While the beleaguered Conservative party convenes in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has plenty to consider regarding its future direction. There is uncertainty if a road forward is available. These are tough times for a political party that now has little, if anything, new or unique to say to voters.

An Alternate Reality

Things could have turned out vastly better if real advances had been made on an agenda that is important for people across the country: Levelling up. But the former leadership lacked the slightest idea on how to turn his zeitgeisty rhetoric on social mobility into actual implementation. During the initial period after the general election, it debated what the phrase truly represented.

I found it bizarre, because I’d already told the Prime Minister what social mobility meant when we first spoke about it during his leadership campaign. This terminology was a concept I originated and used at the education ministry to talk about life chances. It served as our guiding principle, and its definition is straightforward: levelling up is the method by which we realize equality of opportunity – without removing opportunity away from those who already have it, but rather by extending chances to those that don’t.

The Core Concept

The other key education department term we used, “ability is distributed uniformly across our country, yet chances are not”, represented another a deliberate expression, reflecting the two parts of a fairness agenda. Initially, potential shared equally but not nurtured uniformly through our education system. Furthermore, chances not distributed fairly by the private sector or our economy. As a result, education and business were essential to achieving stronger social mobility. This was an mission about the community framework of our country – fostering human talent and connecting them to chances.

The Reality of Implementation

How did the social mobility agenda become under Johnson’s Conservatives? Local investment schemes overseen from the DLUHC. Decorative floral displays and rearranged intersections. An official policy document was released nearly three years after the leadership change, which saw existing policy approaches relabelled under the new levelling up banner.

Therefore, a broader social mobility agenda went unpursued, as well as all the improvement that it might have driven – in investment, commerce, fiscal strategy, tax and in local regeneration. Additionally, in education, including a university system that has become a scapegoat for leaders across parties – although it remains the strongest driver of upward movement for individuals from less privileged homes, like me, this country has had throughout modern times. Possibly the only engine of fair chances, working extensively.

The Role of Ambition

Hope is crucial for our country to succeed. To foster ambition, there needs to be a believable feeling that dedication and outcome are connected; that if people aspire, they can achieve. For all administrations, being able to create a feeling of hope about the tomorrow is critical. Research by the Institute for Policy Research at the academic establishment and others, recently released, showed that the ministry’s focus zones I established during my tenure – place-based approaches to enhancing learning results – led to young people in those communities being up to a significant margin more positive about their future than those in comparable communities without these initiatives in place. The evidence is clear: just making an genuine beginning on fair opportunity strategies can quickly and positively change how people view their future.

Missed Opportunities

Unaware of these findings, and in the middle of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in autumn 2022, the Conservative government terminated the programmes. What reason would someone in those areas vote for a organization that took that action? The opportunity areas policy is a single instance of what had the potential to be a transformative administration strategy on levelling up, but that chance was totally misused. Approaches such as this can generate optimism and ambition. In contrast, as the Tories discovered, breaking the promise of equal opportunity is the most expensive error any leadership can make. The electorate held accountable the government for its incompetence but, perhaps most of all, for its failed pledges on levelling up.

The Current Landscape

Now the baton on social mobility and fair access has passed to 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 gradually replacing the hapless incumbents, the alternative party, also has its own message – “reindustrialisation”. It’s a phrase to talk about fresh prospects in communities like the one I was raised in, in South Yorkshire. It suggests that an historical manufacturing base can revive into an revitalized economy.

For voters, it must appear as a déjà vu experience. Identical problem, different language. Yet, currently, little improvement.

The Way Forward

If Labour and Reform UK want to escape the same fate, each group should understand the Conservatives’ failure on social mobility; that equal opportunity talk is one thing, but successful delivery of improved opportunities is significantly more difficult. Britain’s persistently low social mobility remains the key issue for our country, with youth unable to get a proper professional launch, those working hard in employment with minimal progress after the housing costs are covered, and people across the country without any genuine belief their next generation will be able to do advance in life than they have.

Elected officials can discuss fairer opportunities as much as they want. However, which party has the political group that has the comprehensive policy agenda on equal opportunity? I see none. Whichever party succeeds initially, succeeds. Not only for themselves, but, more importantly, for a complete society that has urgently needs equal access so badly.