🔗 Share this article

While the struggling Conservative party gathers in its conference city for its yearly gathering, it has plenty to consider regarding its next steps. Doubt remains if a viable path is available. We are in difficult days for a governing group that now has almost nothing, if anything, new or unique to say to voters.

The Missed Opportunity

The situation might have been markedly improved if tangible progress had been made on an priority that matters to people nationwide: Social mobility. But the former leadership lacked the basic understanding on how to convert the trendy talk on social mobility into concrete action. During the initial period after the general election, it discussed what the term truly represented.

I found it bizarre, because I had previously explained to Johnson what levelling up entailed when we first spoke about it during his leadership campaign. The expression was language I created and used at the Department for Education to talk about equal opportunity. This became our guiding principle, and its meaning is straightforward: social mobility is the means by which we realize equal access – not by taking chances away from those who already have it, but rather by expanding opportunities to those that are without.

The Core Concept

An additional vital DfE phrase we used, “ability is distributed uniformly across our country, however access isn’t”, represented another a deliberate expression, embodying the two parts of a equal opportunity plan. Initially, ability distributed uniformly but not nurtured uniformly through our schools and colleges. Additionally, opportunities not spread evenly by employers or our economic system. Thus, education and business were crucial to achieving stronger social mobility. This represented an agenda about the community framework of our country – investing in individual capabilities and linking them with opportunities.

The Actual Outcome

What did levelling up turn into under the Tory administration? Regional development money managed by the DLUHC. Decorative floral displays and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. A government strategy was published almost thirty-six months after Johnson became leader, which saw ongoing initiatives relabelled under the recently branded agenda.

Therefore, a wider fairness strategy went undeveloped, as well as all the improvement that it could have inspired – in funding, enterprise, financial planning, taxation and in local regeneration. Additionally, in schooling, including a tertiary education that has become a punchbag for politicians of all stripes – even though it remains the strongest driver of upward movement for individuals from less privileged homes, personally, this country has had in recent decades. Perhaps the only engine of fair chances, functioning widely.

Why Hope Matters

Ambition is crucial for our country to succeed. To foster ambition, there needs to be a realistic expectation that hard work and results are related; that if people aspire, they can succeed. For political leadership, being able to create a sense of optimism about the future is critical. Studies by the academic institution at the academic establishment and others, recently released, showed that the ministry’s focus zones I introduced as education secretary – place-based approaches to boosting academic achievement – led to young people in those communities being up to a significant margin more optimistic about their prospects than those in equivalent locations without these initiatives in place. The data shows: just making an authentic start on pro-social mobility policy can swiftly and beneficially change how people view their destiny.

Squandered Chances

Unaware of these findings, and in the middle of its successor selection process, in that period, the Tory administration closed opportunity areas down. Why should any person in those communities vote for a organization that took that action? The opportunity areas policy is a clear case of what might have become a game-changing Conservative government agenda on levelling up, but that possibility was totally misused. Strategies such as this can inspire hope and aspiration. Conversely, as the Conservatives found out, reneging on commitments of equal opportunity is the most expensive error any political party can make. Voters punished the administration for its failure but, perhaps most of all, for its broken promises on levelling up.

Present Circumstances

Now the responsibility on social mobility and equal chances has been taken up by a opposition party. The levelling up rhetoric has been cast off. The new government has its own public messaging of “removing obstacles to success”. The party that is steadily supplanting the failing Conservative party, the challenger, also has its own language – “reindustrialisation”. This expression to talk about new opportunities in areas like the one I was raised in, in the region. It suggests that an industrial past can reincarnate into an revitalized economy.

For the public, it must appear as a Groundhog Day-style loop. Same issue, alternative phrasing. However, so far, no progress.

Lessons for the Future

Whether the government and opposition want to escape the same fate, each group should take lessons from the Tories’ mistakes on levelling up; that fair chance language is one thing, but effective implementation of fairer outcomes is far more challenging. Britain’s chronically poor social mobility remains the key issue for our country, with youth unable to get a proper professional launch, those working hard in employment with little to show after the housing costs are covered, and individuals nationwide without any actual expectation their offspring will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Elected officials can discuss equal chances repeatedly. However, which party has the organization that has the thorough strategy on life chances? I observe no such party. Whoever gets there first, succeeds. Not just for their party, but, significantly, for a whole country that has desperately requires equality of opportunity so badly.