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As the existentially challenged Tories convenes in its conference city for its yearly gathering, it has plenty to consider regarding its future direction. Doubt remains if a clear direction is available. We are in challenging circumstances for a governing group that now has almost nothing, if anything, new or unique to say to the public.

What Could Have Been

Things could have turned out so different if tangible progress had been made on an priority that is important for people throughout the UK: Levelling up. But the former leadership lacked the basic understanding on how to turn his zeitgeisty rhetoric on social mobility into policy reality. Over twenty-four months after the general election, it argued over what the concept even meant.

It seemed strange to me, because I’d already told Johnson what levelling up entailed when we initially discussed about it during the contest for party leader. This terminology was a concept I originated and used at the education ministry to talk about social mobility. It was our core mission, and its purpose is unambiguous: social mobility is the means by which we achieve fair chances – not by taking chances away from those who possess it, but rather by extending opportunities to those that lack them.

Essential Principle

Another crucial education department term we used, “ability is distributed uniformly throughout the nation, however access isn’t”, represented another a deliberate expression, embodying the two parts of a equal opportunity plan. First, potential shared equally but not nurtured uniformly through our education system. Furthermore, access not provided uniformly by businesses or our economic system. As a result, education and business were crucial to achieving stronger social mobility. This was an priority about the community framework of our country – fostering individual capabilities and providing access to opportunities.

The Actual Outcome

What did levelling up turn into under the Tory administration? Regional development money managed by the DLUHC. Street beautification and redeveloped traffic systems. A government strategy was launched almost thirty-six months after Johnson became leader, which saw current strategies repackaged under the fresh social mobility slogan.

As a result, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went ignored, as well as all the reform that it might have driven – in investment, business, fiscal strategy, taxation and in community development. Moreover, in learning, including a higher education sector that has become a target for politicians of all stripes – even though it remains the primary vehicle of life improvement for youth from modest backgrounds, like me, this country has had in recent decades. Perhaps the only engine of equal opportunity, functioning widely.

Why Hope Matters

Ambition is essential for our country to prosper. To foster ambition, there needs to be a credible sense that dedication and outcome are related; that if people aspire, they can achieve. For political leadership, being able to foster a outlook of positivity about the future is critical. Research by the Institute for Policy Research at the university and others, newly available, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I established during my tenure – locally targeted strategies to boosting academic achievement – led to youth in those areas being up to 18 percentage points more hopeful about their prospects than those in equivalent locations without these schemes in place. The data shows: just making an authentic start on equal chance initiatives can swiftly and beneficially change how people perceive their prospects.

Lost Potential

Oblivious to this, and in the middle of its successor selection process, in autumn 2022, the Tory administration closed opportunity areas down. What reason would someone in those areas vote for a political group that did that? The opportunity areas policy is a clear case of what had the potential to be a transformative Tory policy platform on levelling up, but that opportunity was totally misused. Strategies such as this can generate optimism and ambition. On the other hand, as the ruling party found out, breaking the promise of equal opportunity is the biggest blunder any government can make. The public penalized the government for its ineffectiveness but, perhaps most of all, for its failed pledges on social mobility.

Today’s Political Reality

Now the baton on social mobility and fair access has passed to a new administration. The levelling up rhetoric has been discarded. The new government has its own policy language of “eliminating hurdles to advancement”. The party that is steadily supplanting the hapless Tories, the alternative party, also has its own language – “reindustrialisation”. It’s a phrase to talk about fresh prospects in areas like the one I come from, in the region. It suggests that an former economic strength can revive into an revitalized economy.

For the public, it must feel like a déjà vu experience. Same issue, new terminology. However, so far, no progress.

What Must Change

If Labour and Reform UK want to prevent the identical outcome, each group should learn from the Tories’ mistakes on social mobility; that social mobility rhetoric is one thing, but effective implementation of fairer outcomes is much harder. The UK’s chronically poor life chances remains the primary challenge for our country, with youth unable to get a decent career start, those working hard in full-time jobs with minimal progress after the housing costs are covered, and citizens throughout the UK without any actual expectation their children will be able to do advance in life than they have.

Politicians can mention improved access repeatedly. Yet where is the party that has the complete plan on equal opportunity? I see none. The first to achieve this, succeeds. Not just for their organization, but, more importantly, for a whole country that has never needed equality of opportunity so urgently.