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While the beleaguered Conservative party gathers in its conference city for its annual party conference, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its next steps. It’s not even clear if a viable path is available. We are in tough times for a governing group that now has little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the electorate.

The Missed Opportunity

The situation might have been markedly improved if concrete steps had been made on an agenda that is important for people throughout the UK: Levelling up. Yet the previous administration lacked the first clue on how to turn his zeitgeisty rhetoric on social mobility into actual implementation. During the initial period after the general election, it argued over what the concept even meant.

I found it bizarre, because I’d already told Johnson what social mobility signified when we originally talked about it during the contest for party leader. This terminology was a term I developed and used at the DfE to talk about life chances. It was our core mission, and its meaning is clear: social mobility is the means by which we attain equal access – without removing prospects away from those who possess it, but rather by expanding opportunities to those that don’t.

Fundamental Idea

Another crucial education department term we used, “ability is distributed uniformly across our country, but opportunity is not”, served as a intentional wording, embodying the dual components of a equal opportunity plan. To begin with, ability distributed uniformly but not nurtured uniformly through our schools and colleges. Second, access not provided uniformly by businesses or our market. Therefore, education and business were key to achieving better life chances. This constituted an mission about the community framework of our country – supporting individual capabilities and linking them with opportunities.

What Levelling Up Became

What did the social mobility agenda turn into under Johnson’s Conservatives? A towns fund administered out of the DLUHC. Street beautification and rearranged intersections. A white paper was released a significant period after Johnson became leader, which saw ongoing initiatives repackaged under the new levelling up banner.

As a result, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went undeveloped, as well as all the change that it may have generated – in capital, commerce, fiscal strategy, tax and in place-making. Additionally, in education, including a university system that has become a scapegoat for leaders across parties – although it remains the most powerful engine of life improvement for individuals from less privileged homes, including myself, this country has had throughout modern times. Perhaps the only engine of social mobility, functioning widely.

The Role of Ambition

Hope is vital for our country to succeed. For hope to exist, there needs to be a realistic expectation that dedication and outcome are linked; that if people aspire, they can succeed. For any government, being able to create a outlook of positivity about the future is important. Research by the academic institution at the university and others, recently released, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I established during my tenure – place-based approaches to boosting academic achievement – led to young people in those communities being up to 18 percentage points more hopeful about their life ahead than those in equivalent locations without these programmes in place. The research confirms: just making an genuine beginning on fair opportunity strategies can rapidly and effectively change how people feel about their prospects.

Squandered Chances

Oblivious to this, and in the middle of its new leader election, in that period, the Conservative government ended the initiatives. Why would anyone in those regions vote for a party that took that action? The targeted programme is one example of what could have been a game-changing administration strategy on social mobility, but that chance was totally misused. Strategies such as this can generate optimism and ambition. Conversely, as the Conservatives discovered, reneging on commitments of equal opportunity is the biggest blunder any leadership can make. The electorate punished the administration for its ineffectiveness but, above all, for its failed pledges on equal opportunity.

Today’s Political Reality

Currently the baton on social mobility and equality of opportunity has been transferred to a new administration. The previous terminology has been abandoned. The new government has its own policy language of “removing obstacles to success”. The party that is steadily supplanting the hapless Conservative party, the alternative party, also has its own terminology – “industrial revival”. This expression to talk about additional chances in communities like the one I was raised in, in my hometown. It claims that an industrial past can reincarnate into an revitalized economy.

For voters, it must appear as a repetitive cycle. Identical problem, different language. However, so far, no progress.

Lessons for the Future

Should the current and alternative parties want to escape the same fate, the respective organizations should learn from the Conservatives’ failure on social mobility; that social mobility rhetoric is easy to say, but actual achievement of fairer outcomes is much harder. The UK’s endemically weak life chances remains the central problem for our country, with young people unable to get a proper professional launch, those working hard in occupations with minimal progress after the rent has been paid, and individuals nationwide without any genuine belief their offspring will be able to do advance in life than they have.

Elected officials can talk about equal chances as much as they want. Yet where is the party that has the thorough strategy on social mobility? I see none. Whichever party succeeds initially, wins. Not only for their organization, but, more importantly, for a complete society that has desperately requires fair chances so badly.