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As the beleaguered Conservative party convenes in its conference city for its annual party conference, it has plenty to consider regarding its path forward. Doubt remains if a road forward remains open. These are challenging circumstances for a governing group that now has very little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the public.

The Missed Opportunity

The situation might have been vastly better if concrete steps had been made on an priority that is important for people nationwide: Levelling up. But the former leadership hadn’t got the basic understanding on how to convert his zeitgeisty rhetoric on levelling up into policy reality. Over twenty-four months after the 2019 election, it argued over what the phrase actually signified.

I was perplexed, because I had clearly defined for Johnson what social mobility signified when we first spoke about it during the contest for party leader. The phrase was language I created and used at the education ministry to talk about equal opportunity. It served as our departmental mantra, and its meaning is unambiguous: levelling up is the means by which we attain fair chances – not through reducing chances away from those who possess it, but rather by expanding options to those that don’t.

Essential Principle

Another crucial education department term we used, “potential is equally shared around the UK, yet chances are not”, again was a intentional wording, representing the two parts of a fairness agenda. To begin with, talent spread evenly but not developed consistently through our learning institutions. Furthermore, access not provided uniformly by the private sector or our market. Thus, learning and employment were essential to achieving better life chances. This represented an priority about the community framework of our country – supporting people’s potential and providing access to chances.

What Levelling Up Became

What did the social mobility agenda evolve into under the Tory administration? Local investment schemes overseen from the DLUHC. Street beautification and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. A white paper was released a significant period after the Prime Minister took office, which saw existing policy approaches relabelled under the fresh social mobility slogan.

As a result, a wider fairness strategy went unpursued, as well as all the improvement that it might have driven – in capital, business, financial planning, revenue and in local regeneration. And, of course, in learning, including a university system that has become a punchbag for politicians of all stripes – despite the fact that it remains the primary vehicle of upward movement for youth from modest backgrounds, including myself, this country has had over the past 30 years. Maybe the sole mechanism of fair chances, operating at scale.

The Role of Ambition

Ambition is essential for our country to thrive. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a realistic expectation that hard work and results are connected; that if people aim high, they can achieve. For any government, being able to create a feeling of hope about the future is critical. Studies by the Institute for Policy Research at the university and others, newly available, showed that the DfE’s 12 “opportunity areas” I introduced as education secretary – place-based approaches to enhancing learning results – led to youth in those communities being up to nearly one-fifth more positive about their future than those in comparable communities without these initiatives in place. The evidence is clear: just making an authentic start on fair opportunity strategies can rapidly and effectively change how people perceive their prospects.

Lost Potential

Unaware of these findings, and in the middle of its successor selection process, in autumn 2022, the ruling party ended the initiatives. Why should any person in those communities vote for a organization that took that action? The opportunity areas policy is one example of what could have been a transformative Tory policy platform on levelling up, but that possibility was totally misused. Strategies such as this can generate optimism and ambition. Conversely, as the ruling party discovered, breaking the promise of equal opportunity is the costliest mistake any political party can make. The electorate punished the government for its incompetence but, perhaps most of all, for its broken promises on social mobility.

Today’s Political Reality

Currently the mandate on equal opportunity and fair access has passed to a new administration. The old slogan has been abandoned. The new government has its own policy language of “eliminating hurdles to advancement”. The organization that is increasingly displacing the hapless Conservative party, Reform UK, also has its own language – “industrial revival”. It’s a phrase to talk about fresh prospects in communities like the one I grew up in, in South Yorkshire. It promises that an industrial past can revive into an industrial future.

For voters, it must appear as a repetitive cycle. Same issue, alternative phrasing. Yet, currently, little improvement.

Lessons for the Future

Should the current and alternative parties want to prevent the similar destiny, each group should understand the Tories’ mistakes on social mobility; that equal opportunity talk is simple terminology, but successful delivery of improved opportunities is far more challenging. The UK’s persistently low equal opportunity remains the central problem for our country, with young people unable to get a good job beginning, those putting in effort in full-time jobs with few results after the housing costs are covered, and individuals nationwide without any real hope their children will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Politicians can discuss fairer opportunities however much they like. Yet where is the organization that has the comprehensive policy agenda on life chances? None appear to exist. Whoever gets there first, wins. Not just for their party, but, crucially, for a complete society that has never needed equality of opportunity so urgently.