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While the beleaguered Conservative party convenes in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its future direction. There is uncertainty if a road forward is available. We are in tough times for a governing group that now has very little, if anything, new or unique to say to voters.

The Missed Opportunity

Things could have turned out vastly better if tangible progress had been made on an priority that is important for people across the country: Levelling up. But the former leadership lacked the slightest idea on how to convert his zeitgeisty rhetoric on social mobility into concrete action. Over twenty-four months after the 2019 election, it argued over what the term even meant.

I was perplexed, because I had clearly defined for the Prime Minister what levelling up entailed when we originally talked about it during his leadership campaign. The expression was a term I developed and used at the Department for Education to talk about life chances. This became our departmental mantra, and its meaning is unambiguous: levelling up is the means by which we realize equal access – without removing opportunity away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by providing opportunities to those that lack them.

The Core Concept

An additional vital DfE phrase we used, “talent is spread evenly around the UK, however access isn’t”, again was a intentional wording, representing the two halves of a social mobility strategy. First, potential shared equally but not nurtured uniformly through our education system. Additionally, opportunities not spread evenly by employers or our economy. Thus, education and business were key to achieving improved equality of opportunity. This constituted an priority about the social fabric of our country – supporting individual capabilities and linking them with opportunities.

The Actual Outcome

How did the social mobility agenda turn into under the previous government? A towns fund administered out of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Decorative floral displays and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. A government strategy was released almost thirty-six months after the leadership change, which saw existing policy approaches repackaged under the fresh social mobility slogan.

Consequently, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went ignored, as well as all the change that it may have generated – in investment, business, financial planning, revenue and in community development. Additionally, in schooling, including a university system that has become a target for elected officials – even though it remains the strongest driver of life improvement for individuals from less privileged homes, like me, this country has had throughout modern times. Possibly the sole mechanism of social mobility, functioning widely.

Why Hope Matters

Ambition is crucial for our country to prosper. To foster ambition, there needs to be a realistic expectation that effort and reward are connected; that if people dream big, they can achieve. For political leadership, being able to foster a sense of optimism about the years ahead is important. Research by the Institute for Policy Research at the university and others, published last month, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I launched while in office – community-focused methods to boosting academic achievement – led to youth in those areas being up to 18 percentage points more positive about their prospects than those in similar areas without these programmes in place. The evidence is clear: just making an authentic start on equal chance initiatives can quickly and positively change how people feel about their future.

Lost Potential

Oblivious to this, and in the throes of its successor selection process, in that period, the ruling party terminated the programmes. Why should any person in those regions vote for a political group that did that? The opportunity areas policy is a single instance of what had the potential to be a transformative Tory policy platform on social mobility, but that possibility was hopelessly squandered. Methods such as this can create belief and drive. In contrast, as the Conservatives discovered, reneging on commitments of equal opportunity is the biggest blunder any political party can make. The electorate held accountable the government for its ineffectiveness but, primarily, for its unfulfilled commitments on levelling up.

Today’s Political Reality

Currently the responsibility on equal opportunity and equality of opportunity has been taken up by a new administration. The old slogan has been cast off. The new government has its own public messaging of “eliminating hurdles to advancement”. The political group that is gradually replacing the failing Conservative party, Reform UK, also has its own language – “economic renewal”. This expression to talk about additional chances in areas like the one I was raised in, in my hometown. It claims that an industrial past can reincarnate into an modern manufacturing sector.

For the public, it must feel like a repetitive cycle. Same issue, different language. But – as yet – no results.

The Way Forward

Should the current and alternative parties want to avoid the similar destiny, each group should understand the previous government’s errors on social mobility; that fair chance language is easy to say, but effective implementation of more equal results is much harder. Britain’s chronically poor equal opportunity remains the key issue for our country, with young people unable to get a decent career start, those working hard in employment with little to show after the living expenses are met, and people across the country without any actual expectation their next generation will be able to do advance in life than they have.

Politicians can discuss fairer opportunities as much as they want. Yet where is the party that has the thorough strategy on life chances? None appear to exist. The first to achieve this, prevails. Not only for themselves, but, more importantly, for a entire nation that has never needed fair chances so badly.