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As the beleaguered Tories convenes in Manchester for its annual party conference, it has much to ponder regarding its path forward. There is uncertainty if a clear direction remains open. We are in difficult days for a governing group that now has little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the public.

The Missed Opportunity

Things could have turned out vastly better if concrete steps had been made on an agenda that is important for people nationwide: Social mobility. Yet the previous administration hadn’t got the basic understanding on how to transform his zeitgeisty rhetoric on levelling up into actual implementation. Over twenty-four months after the 2019 election, it debated what the concept even meant.

It seemed strange to me, because I had previously explained to Johnson what levelling up entailed when we originally talked about it during the contest for party leader. The phrase was language I created and used at the education ministry to talk about social mobility. It was our core mission, and its meaning is unambiguous: levelling up is the means by which we realize equal access – not through reducing prospects away from those who possess it, but rather by extending options to those that lack them.

The Core Concept

The other key education department term we used, “talent is spread evenly throughout the nation, yet chances are not”, served as a purposeful phrase, reflecting the two halves of a equal opportunity plan. To begin with, ability distributed uniformly but not developed consistently through our learning institutions. Additionally, chances not distributed fairly by the private sector or our economic system. As a result, learning and employment were essential to achieving stronger social mobility. This constituted an agenda about the societal structure of our country – fostering people’s potential and connecting them to opportunities.

The Actual Outcome

How did levelling up turn into under the Tory administration? Regional development money administered out of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Street beautification and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. A government strategy was published nearly three years after the Prime Minister took office, which saw existing policy approaches repackaged under the recently branded agenda.

Consequently, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went unpursued, as well as all the improvement that it might have driven – in capital, enterprise, financial planning, revenue and in community development. And, of course, in schooling, including a tertiary education that has become a target for leaders across parties – despite the fact that it remains the primary vehicle of life improvement for young working-class people, including myself, this country has had over the past 30 years. Maybe the only engine of equal opportunity, operating at scale.

The Role of Ambition

Ambition is vital for our country to succeed. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a believable feeling that effort and reward are related; that if people dream big, they can achieve. For political leadership, being able to create a feeling of hope about the tomorrow is critical. Research by the academic institution at Bath University and others, recently released, showed that the DfE’s 12 “opportunity areas” I introduced as education secretary – locally targeted strategies to boosting academic achievement – led to young people in those areas being up to nearly one-fifth more positive about their life ahead than those in similar areas without these programmes in place. The data shows: just making an sincere effort on fair opportunity strategies can quickly and positively change how people feel about their future.

Lost Potential

Oblivious to this, and in the throes of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in autumn 2022, the ruling party ended the initiatives. Why would anyone in those regions vote for a political group that took that action? The opportunity areas policy is a single instance of what might have become a revolutionary administration strategy on levelling up, but that opportunity was hopelessly squandered. Approaches such as this can generate optimism and ambition. On the other hand, as the Tories learned, reneging on commitments of fair chances is the most expensive error any government can make. The electorate held accountable the administration for its ineffectiveness but, above all, for its broken promises on equal opportunity.

The Current Landscape

Now the mandate on life chances and fair access has been taken up by a new administration. The previous terminology has been abandoned. The new government has its own public messaging of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The political group that is steadily supplanting the failing Conservative party, the alternative party, also has its own terminology – “reindustrialisation”. It’s a phrase to talk about fresh prospects in communities like the one I was raised in, in the region. It promises that an historical manufacturing base can revive into an industrial future.

To the electorate, it must seem like a déjà vu experience. Same issue, new terminology. But – as yet – no results.

The Way Forward

Should the current and alternative parties want to escape the identical outcome, each group should learn from the previous government’s errors on social mobility; that fair chance language is simple terminology, but successful delivery of improved opportunities is far more challenging. Britain’s chronically poor social mobility remains the central problem for our country, with youth unable to get a good job beginning, those laboring in employment with little to show after the living expenses are met, and citizens throughout the UK without any actual expectation their offspring will be able to do improve in life than they have.

Elected officials can talk about equal chances repeatedly. However, which party has the organization that has the comprehensive policy agenda on equal opportunity? I see none. Whoever gets there first, prevails. Not just for their organization, but, crucially, for a whole country that has urgently needs fair chances so desperately.