🔗 Share this article

While the existentially challenged Conservative party gathers in its conference city for its yearly gathering, it has much to ponder regarding its path forward. There is uncertainty if a clear direction remains open. We are in tough times for a governing group that now has little, if anything, new or unique to say to the electorate.

What Could Have Been

It could have been markedly improved if real advances had been made on an agenda that matters to people nationwide: Equal opportunity. However Boris Johnson’s government lacked the slightest idea on how to turn his zeitgeisty rhetoric on social mobility into policy reality. During the initial period after the general election, it argued over what the term truly represented.

I was perplexed, because I had clearly defined for Johnson what levelling up signified when we initially discussed about it during the contest for party leader. The expression was a concept I originated and used at the DfE to talk about social mobility. It was our guiding principle, and its meaning is straightforward: social mobility is the means by which we realize equality of opportunity – not through reducing prospects away from those who already have it, but rather by providing chances to those that are without.

The Core Concept

The other key DfE phrase we used, “ability is distributed uniformly throughout the nation, yet chances are not”, served as a purposeful phrase, embodying the two halves of a fairness agenda. First, talent spread evenly but not nurtured uniformly through our learning institutions. Second, chances not distributed fairly by the private sector or our economy. As a result, schools and companies were essential to achieving stronger social mobility. This was an priority about the community framework of our country – fostering individual capabilities and providing access to opportunities.

What Levelling Up Became

How did the social mobility agenda turn into under the Tory administration? Regional development money administered out of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Decorative floral displays and redeveloped traffic systems. A white paper was launched a significant period after the Prime Minister took office, which saw current strategies repackaged under the new levelling up banner.

As a result, a wider fairness strategy went undeveloped, as well as all the change that it might have driven – in funding, commerce, financial planning, taxation and in place-making. And, of course, in schooling, including a university system that has become a target for elected officials – although it remains the primary vehicle of upward movement for youth from modest backgrounds, like me, this country has had over the past 30 years. Perhaps the sole mechanism of fair chances, operating at scale.

The Importance of Aspiration

Hope is crucial for our country to succeed. For hope to exist, there needs to be a realistic expectation that effort and reward are connected; that if people aim high, they can achieve. For any government, being able to foster a feeling of hope about the future is important. Analysis by the academic institution at Bath University and others, newly available, showed that the ministry’s focus zones I introduced as education secretary – locally targeted strategies to enhancing learning results – led to students in those neighborhoods being up to a significant margin more hopeful about their future than those in similar areas without these programmes in place. The evidence is clear: just making an sincere effort on equal chance initiatives can quickly and positively change how people feel about their destiny.

Lost Potential

Ignoring this evidence, and in the midst of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in September 2022, the Conservative government ended the initiatives. Why should any person in those communities vote for a party that did that? The opportunity areas policy is a single instance of what could have been a revolutionary Conservative government agenda on levelling up, but that chance was totally misused. Approaches such as this can create belief and drive. In contrast, as the Conservatives found out, breaking the promise of social mobility is the biggest blunder any leadership can make. The public punished the leadership for its incompetence but, primarily, for its failed pledges on levelling up.

Today’s Political Reality

Currently the baton on social mobility and equal chances has been taken up by a Labour government. The previous terminology has been abandoned. The current administration has its own political rhetoric of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The political group that is gradually replacing the struggling Tories, the challenger, also has its own language – “reindustrialisation”. The terminology to talk about new opportunities in regions like the one I was raised in, in my hometown. It claims that an historical manufacturing base can be reborn into an industrial future.

For the public, it must feel like a Groundhog Day-style loop. Same issue, new terminology. But – as yet – no results.

The Way Forward

If Labour and Reform UK want to escape the identical outcome, the respective organizations should learn from the previous government’s errors on levelling up; that social mobility rhetoric is easy to say, but effective implementation of fairer outcomes is much harder. Our nation’s persistently low social mobility remains the key issue for our country, with the next generation unable to get a proper professional launch, those laboring in employment with little to show after the living expenses are met, and individuals nationwide without any actual expectation their children will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Elected officials can talk about fairer opportunities as much as they want. However, which party has the party that has the thorough strategy on life chances? None appear to exist. Whichever party succeeds initially, succeeds. Not just for their organization, but, significantly, for a complete society that has desperately requires fair chances so badly.