🔗 Share this article

While the struggling Conservative party gathers in Manchester for its annual party conference, it has much to ponder regarding its future direction. It’s not even clear if a road forward is available. We are in challenging circumstances for a political party that now has very little, if anything, new or unique to say to the electorate.

An Alternate Reality

It could have been vastly better if tangible progress had been made on an agenda that resonates with people across the country: Equal opportunity. Yet the former leadership lacked the slightest idea on how to convert his zeitgeisty rhetoric on levelling up into concrete action. Over twenty-four months after the general election, it debated what the term actually signified.

I found it bizarre, because I had clearly defined for Johnson what levelling up meant when we initially discussed about it during his leadership campaign. The expression was a term I developed and used at the DfE to talk about social mobility. It served as our departmental mantra, and its meaning is unambiguous: levelling up is the approach by which we realize equality of opportunity – not by taking chances away from those who possess it, but rather by providing opportunities to those that are without.

The Core Concept

Another crucial DfE phrase we used, “ability is distributed uniformly throughout the nation, but opportunity is not”, served as a intentional wording, representing the dual components of a social mobility strategy. Initially, talent spread evenly but not cultivated evenly through our schools and colleges. Furthermore, access not provided uniformly by businesses or our economy. Therefore, learning and employment were crucial to achieving better life chances. This was an agenda about the community framework of our country – supporting people’s potential and linking them with opportunities.

The Reality of Implementation

How did the social mobility agenda evolve into under the Tory administration? Regional development money overseen from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Decorative floral displays and redeveloped traffic systems. A government strategy was launched a significant period after the leadership change, which saw current strategies rebadged under the fresh social mobility slogan.

Therefore, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went unpursued, as well as all the change that it might have driven – in investment, commerce, fiscal strategy, taxation and in place-making. Additionally, in schooling, including a university system that has become a scapegoat for leaders across parties – even though it remains the primary vehicle of social mobility for youth from modest backgrounds, including myself, this country has had in recent decades. Maybe the primary source of fair chances, working extensively.

The Role of Ambition

Hope is essential for our country to prosper. To foster ambition, there needs to be a credible sense that effort and reward are related; that if people aim high, they can attain. For all administrations, being able to create a sense of optimism about the years ahead is crucial. Analysis by the academic institution at the academic establishment and others, newly available, showed that the ministry’s focus zones I established during my tenure – locally targeted strategies to improving education outcomes – led to youth in those neighborhoods being up to a significant margin more hopeful about their prospects than those in comparable communities without these schemes in place. The evidence is clear: just making an authentic start on pro-social mobility policy can quickly and positively change how people view their destiny.

Missed Opportunities

Unaware of these findings, and in the throes of its successor selection process, in that period, the ruling party closed opportunity areas down. What reason would someone 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 game-changing administration strategy on levelling up, but that possibility was completely wasted. Strategies such as this can generate optimism and ambition. On the other hand, as the ruling party found out, failing to deliver of equal opportunity is the biggest blunder any leadership can make. The electorate held accountable the leadership for its ineffectiveness but, perhaps most of all, for its broken promises on equal opportunity.

Today’s Political Reality

Now the mandate on social mobility and fair access has passed to a new administration. The previous terminology has been cast off. The new government has its own political rhetoric of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The party that is increasingly displacing the struggling Tories, the alternative party, also has its own terminology – “industrial revival”. The terminology to talk about additional chances in communities like the one I grew up in, in South Yorkshire. It promises that an historical manufacturing base can be reborn into an modern manufacturing sector.

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

What Must Change

If Labour and Reform UK want to prevent the similar destiny, each group should take lessons from the Conservatives’ failure on levelling up; that fair chance language is easy to say, but actual achievement of more equal results is significantly more difficult. Britain’s endemically weak life chances remains the key issue for our country, with the next generation unable to get a decent career start, those putting in effort in occupations with minimal progress after the living expenses are met, and people across the country without any actual expectation their offspring will be able to do improve in life than they have.

Leaders can discuss improved access as much as they want. But where is the organization that has the thorough strategy on social mobility? I observe no such party. Whoever gets there first, wins. Not only for their party, but, significantly, for a whole country that has never needed fair chances so desperately.