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While the struggling Conservative party meets in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has plenty to consider regarding its future direction. It’s not even clear if a road forward exists at all. We are in difficult days for a governing group that now has very little, if anything, new or unique to say to the electorate.

The Missed Opportunity

The situation might have been markedly improved if tangible progress had been made on an policy focus that is important for people across the country: Equal opportunity. Yet the former leadership lacked the slightest idea on how to turn the popular slogan on levelling up into actual implementation. Over twenty-four months after the 2019 election, it discussed what the concept truly represented.

I was perplexed, because I had previously explained to Johnson what social mobility meant when we initially discussed about it during the contest for party leader. This terminology was a concept I originated and used at the Department for Education to talk about equal opportunity. This became our guiding principle, and its purpose is clear: social mobility is the approach by which we realize equality of opportunity – without removing chances away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by providing opportunities to those that don’t.

Fundamental Idea

An additional vital education department term we used, “potential is equally shared around the UK, however access isn’t”, represented another a deliberate expression, embodying the dual components of a fairness agenda. To begin with, ability distributed uniformly but not nurtured uniformly through our learning institutions. Furthermore, opportunities not spread evenly by businesses or our economic system. As a result, schools and companies were essential to achieving improved equality of opportunity. This constituted an mission about the societal structure of our country – investing in human talent and providing access to opportunities.

The Reality of Implementation

What did the social mobility agenda evolve into under the previous government? Regional development money managed by the DLUHC. Hanging baskets and rearranged intersections. A white paper was launched almost thirty-six months after the leadership change, which saw existing policy approaches repackaged under the fresh social mobility slogan.

As a result, a broader social mobility agenda went undeveloped, as well as all the change that it could have inspired – in funding, commerce, fiscal strategy, tax and in community development. Additionally, in learning, including a university system that has become a punchbag for elected officials – although it remains the most powerful engine of upward movement for individuals from less privileged homes, including myself, this country has had in recent decades. Perhaps the sole mechanism of fair chances, operating at scale.

Why Hope Matters

Aspiration is vital for our country to thrive. To foster ambition, there needs to be a believable feeling that effort and reward are related; that if people aspire, they can succeed. For political leadership, being able to create a feeling of hope about the tomorrow is important. Analysis by the academic institution at Bath University and others, recently released, showed that the DfE’s 12 “opportunity areas” I established during my tenure – locally targeted strategies to boosting academic achievement – led to young people in those areas being up to a significant margin more positive about their future than those in comparable communities without these schemes in place. The data shows: just making an sincere effort on equal chance initiatives can quickly and positively change how people view their prospects.

Lost Potential

Ignoring this evidence, and in the middle of its successor selection process, in September 2022, the ruling party closed opportunity areas down. What reason would someone in those communities vote for a organization that took that action? The opportunity areas policy is one example of what could have been a transformative Tory policy platform on social mobility, but that chance was hopelessly squandered. Approaches such as this can inspire hope and aspiration. Conversely, as the Conservatives learned, breaking the promise of social mobility is the most expensive error any government can make. The electorate punished the administration for its incompetence but, primarily, for its failed pledges on equal opportunity.

Today’s Political Reality

At present the responsibility on equal opportunity and equal chances has passed to a Labour government. The levelling up rhetoric has been discarded. The new government has its own public messaging of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The organization that is increasingly displacing the failing Tories, the alternative party, also has its own terminology – “industrial revival”. The terminology to talk about new opportunities in areas like the one I come from, in South Yorkshire. It claims that an former economic strength can revive into an modern manufacturing sector.

For voters, it must seem like a repetitive cycle. Similar challenge, different language. However, so far, no progress.

What Must Change

If Labour and Reform UK want to escape the similar destiny, both these parties should take lessons from the Conservatives’ failure on levelling up; that social mobility rhetoric is easy to say, but effective implementation of more equal results is much harder. Our nation’s persistently low life chances remains the central problem for our country, with the next generation unable to get a good job beginning, those putting in effort in occupations with few results after the living expenses are met, and citizens throughout the UK without any actual expectation their next generation will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Elected officials can mention improved access however much they like. However, which party has the organization that has the complete plan on social mobility? I see none. The first to achieve this, succeeds. Not only for themselves, but, crucially, for a whole country that has desperately requires equality of opportunity so badly.