🔗 Share this article

While the existentially challenged Tories convenes 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 exists at all. These are tough times for a political party that now has almost nothing, if anything, new or unique to say to the public.

What Could Have Been

The situation might have been vastly better if tangible progress had been made on an policy focus that matters to people nationwide: Equal opportunity. But the former leadership did not possess the basic understanding on how to transform the trendy talk on social mobility into policy reality. During the initial period after the 2019 election, it discussed what the term actually signified.

I found it bizarre, because I had clearly defined for the Prime Minister what social mobility entailed when we first spoke about it during his leadership campaign. The expression was language I created and used at the DfE to talk about equal opportunity. This became our departmental mantra, and its meaning is unambiguous: levelling up is the approach by which we achieve equality of opportunity – not by taking opportunity away from those who already have it, but rather by extending options to those that are without.

The Core Concept

The other key education department term we used, “ability is distributed uniformly throughout the nation, but opportunity is not”, again was a intentional wording, representing the dual components of a fairness agenda. To begin with, potential shared equally but not cultivated evenly through our learning institutions. Additionally, access not provided uniformly by employers or our economy. As a result, schools and companies were crucial to achieving better life chances. This was an mission about the social fabric of our country – fostering people’s potential and linking them with prospects.

What Levelling Up Became

How did levelling up turn into under the previous government? Regional development money managed by the DLUHC. Decorative floral displays and redeveloped traffic systems. A white paper was launched almost thirty-six months after Johnson became leader, which saw ongoing initiatives relabelled under the fresh social mobility slogan.

Therefore, a wider fairness strategy went undeveloped, as well as all the change that it may have generated – in investment, commerce, financial planning, tax and in local regeneration. Moreover, in schooling, including a higher education sector that has become a punchbag for politicians of all stripes – even though it remains the strongest driver of social mobility for young working-class people, like me, this country has had in recent decades. Possibly the only engine of social mobility, operating at scale.

The Role of Ambition

Ambition is crucial for our country to prosper. To foster ambition, there needs to be a believable feeling that effort and reward are related; that if people aspire, they can achieve. For political leadership, being able to create a outlook of positivity about the future is important. Analysis by the research body at the academic establishment and others, published last month, showed that the DfE’s 12 “opportunity areas” I launched while in office – locally targeted strategies to boosting academic achievement – led to young people in those neighborhoods being up to 18 percentage points more hopeful about their life ahead than those in equivalent locations without these initiatives in place. The evidence is clear: just making an sincere effort on equal chance initiatives can swiftly and beneficially change how people perceive their future.

Missed Opportunities

Oblivious to this, and in the throes of its new leader election, in September 2022, the Conservative government terminated the programmes. Why should any person in those communities vote for a organization that did that? The targeted programme is one example of what might have become a revolutionary Conservative government agenda on social mobility, but that opportunity was totally misused. Strategies such as this can generate optimism and ambition. On the other hand, as the ruling party discovered, breaking the promise of fair chances is the costliest mistake any leadership can make. Voters penalized the government for its ineffectiveness but, above all, for its failed pledges on levelling up.

Present Circumstances

Currently the baton on social mobility and equal chances has been taken up by a new administration. The old slogan 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 hapless Conservative party, the challenger, also has its own message – “economic renewal”. It’s a phrase to talk about fresh prospects in regions like the one I come from, in South Yorkshire. It promises that an historical manufacturing base can reincarnate into an revitalized economy.

To the electorate, it must appear as a repetitive cycle. Same issue, different language. Yet, currently, little improvement.

Lessons for the Future

Should the current and alternative parties want to prevent the similar destiny, the respective organizations should learn from the Conservatives’ failure on social mobility; that social mobility rhetoric is simple terminology, but effective implementation of improved opportunities is much harder. Britain’s persistently low life chances remains the central problem for our country, with young people unable to get a decent career start, those laboring in full-time jobs with few results after the rent has been paid, and individuals nationwide without any actual expectation their children will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Leaders can discuss fairer opportunities however much they like. However, which party has the party that has the thorough strategy on social mobility? None appear to exist. Whichever party succeeds initially, prevails. Not only for themselves, but, crucially, for a complete society that has never needed equality of opportunity so desperately.