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While the struggling Tories gathers in its conference city for its yearly gathering, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its path forward. It’s not even clear if a road forward exists at all. These are challenging circumstances for a governing group that now has very little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the public.

What Could Have Been

Things could have turned out vastly better if real advances had been made on an policy focus that is important for people across the country: Equal opportunity. Yet the previous administration lacked the slightest idea on how to turn his zeitgeisty rhetoric on social mobility into concrete action. Over twenty-four months after the general election, it debated what the concept even meant.

It seemed strange to me, because I’d already told the Prime Minister what social mobility entailed when we first spoke about it during the contest for party leader. This terminology was a term I developed and used at the DfE to talk about equal opportunity. It served as our guiding principle, and its meaning is clear: social mobility is the means by which we attain equal access – not through reducing chances away from those who possess it, but rather by providing opportunities to those that lack them.

Fundamental Idea

Another crucial education department term we used, “potential is equally shared around the UK, however access isn’t”, again was a deliberate expression, representing the dual components of a social mobility strategy. To begin with, talent spread evenly but not developed consistently through our education system. Second, chances not distributed fairly by the private sector or our economy. Thus, education and business were crucial to achieving stronger social mobility. This represented an priority about the community framework of our country – supporting people’s potential and providing access to chances.

The Reality of Implementation

How did the social mobility agenda become under Johnson’s Conservatives? Local investment schemes administered out of the DLUHC. Hanging baskets and rearranged intersections. A white paper was released a significant period after the leadership change, which saw ongoing initiatives rebadged under the recently branded agenda.

Therefore, a broader social mobility agenda went undeveloped, as well as all the improvement that it may have generated – in funding, commerce, fiscal strategy, taxation and in local regeneration. And, of course, in education, including a tertiary education that has become a target for elected officials – although it remains the primary vehicle of social mobility for individuals from less privileged homes, like me, this country has had throughout modern times. Possibly the only engine of fair chances, functioning widely.

Why Hope Matters

Ambition is crucial for our country to succeed. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a believable feeling that dedication and outcome are related; that if people aim high, they can attain. For all administrations, being able to create a outlook of positivity about the years ahead is crucial. Studies by the Institute for Policy Research at Bath University and others, published last month, showed that the DfE’s 12 “opportunity areas” I established during my tenure – locally targeted strategies to improving education outcomes – led to young people in those communities being up to a significant margin more hopeful about their future than those in comparable communities without these schemes in place. The evidence is clear: just making an genuine beginning on fair opportunity strategies can rapidly and effectively change how people perceive their destiny.

Squandered Chances

Unaware of these findings, and in the middle of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in autumn 2022, the ruling party terminated the programmes. What reason would someone in those areas vote for a organization that took that action? This specific initiative is one example of what might have become a transformative administration strategy on levelling up, but that chance was totally misused. Strategies such as this can create belief and drive. In contrast, as the Tories discovered, failing to deliver of equal opportunity is the costliest mistake any political party can make. The public punished the leadership for its failure but, perhaps most of all, for its unfulfilled commitments on levelling up.

Today’s Political Reality

Now the baton on social mobility and fair access has been taken up by a opposition party. The levelling up rhetoric has been discarded. The current administration has its own policy language of “removing obstacles to success”. The political group that is gradually replacing the failing Tories, the alternative party, also has its own message – “reindustrialisation”. The terminology to talk about additional chances in communities like the one I come from, in the region. It suggests that an industrial past can revive into an industrial future.

For the public, it must feel like a repetitive cycle. Similar challenge, different language. However, so far, no progress.

The Way Forward

Whether the government and opposition want to avoid the same fate, the respective organizations should take lessons from the previous government’s errors on levelling up; that equal opportunity talk is one thing, but actual achievement of more equal results is much harder. The UK’s chronically poor social mobility remains the primary challenge for our country, with youth unable to get a decent career start, those putting in effort in employment with little to show after the housing costs are covered, and individuals nationwide without any actual expectation their next generation will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Politicians can talk about improved access repeatedly. However, which party has the organization that has the complete plan on life chances? None appear to exist. The first to achieve this, wins. Not only for themselves, but, more importantly, for a whole country that has never needed equal access so desperately.