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As the existentially challenged Conservative party meets in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has much to ponder regarding its next steps. There is uncertainty if a road forward remains open. We are in challenging circumstances for a governing group that now has very little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to voters.

The Missed Opportunity

The situation might have been vastly better if real advances had been made on an priority that resonates with people across the country: Levelling up. Yet Boris Johnson’s government did not possess the first clue on how to turn the trendy talk on social mobility into concrete action. During the initial period after the 2019 election, it discussed what the concept actually signified.

It seemed strange to me, because I’d already told Johnson what social mobility entailed when we originally talked about it during his leadership campaign. This terminology was a term I developed and used at the DfE to talk about life chances. This became our core mission, and its purpose is straightforward: social mobility is the approach by which we realize fair chances – not by taking opportunity away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by expanding chances to those that don’t.

Essential Principle

Another crucial DfE phrase we used, “talent is spread evenly around the UK, yet chances are not”, represented another a deliberate expression, embodying the two halves of a fairness agenda. To begin with, potential shared equally but not cultivated evenly through our schools and colleges. Additionally, access not provided uniformly by the private sector or our market. As a result, learning and employment were essential to achieving stronger social mobility. This was an agenda about the social fabric of our country – fostering human talent and connecting them to chances.

What Levelling Up Became

How did the social mobility agenda become under the previous government? Local investment schemes administered out of the DLUHC. Street beautification and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. An official policy document was published nearly three years after the leadership change, which saw existing policy approaches relabelled under the fresh social mobility slogan.

As a result, a wider fairness strategy went unpursued, as well as all the change that it may have generated – in investment, commerce, financial planning, revenue and in place-making. Additionally, in education, including a tertiary education that has become a punchbag for elected officials – even though it remains the primary vehicle of life improvement for young working-class people, like me, this country has had over the past 30 years. Possibly the sole mechanism of equal opportunity, functioning widely.

The Importance of Aspiration

Aspiration is essential for our country to prosper. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a realistic expectation that dedication and outcome are linked; that if people aim high, they can achieve. For political leadership, being able to foster a sense of optimism about the tomorrow is important. Studies by the Institute for Policy Research at Bath University and others, recently released, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I launched while in office – community-focused methods to boosting academic achievement – led to students in those communities being up to 18 percentage points more positive about their future than those in comparable communities without these schemes in place. The data shows: just making an authentic start on equal chance initiatives can rapidly and effectively change how people perceive their future.

Lost Potential

Ignoring this evidence, and in the middle of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in that period, the Tory administration closed opportunity areas down. Why should any person in those areas vote for a political group that took that action? The targeted programme is a single instance of what could have been a game-changing administration strategy on levelling up, but that chance was completely wasted. Strategies such as this can create belief and drive. Conversely, as the ruling party learned, failing to deliver of equal opportunity is the biggest blunder any leadership can make. The electorate penalized the leadership for its incompetence but, perhaps most of all, for its unfulfilled commitments on equal opportunity.

Present Circumstances

Currently the baton on life chances and equality of opportunity has been transferred to a opposition party. The levelling up rhetoric has been discarded. Labour has its own policy language of “eliminating hurdles to advancement”. The political group that is increasingly displacing the failing incumbents, the alternative party, also has its own language – “economic renewal”. It’s a phrase to talk about new opportunities in areas like the one I was raised in, in the region. It suggests that an former economic strength can reincarnate into an industrial future.

To the electorate, it must seem like a déjà vu experience. Similar challenge, different language. Yet, currently, little improvement.

What Must Change

If Labour and Reform UK want to prevent the same fate, the respective organizations should take lessons from the previous government’s errors on social mobility; that social mobility rhetoric is easy to say, but actual achievement of fairer outcomes is much harder. Britain’s chronically poor equal opportunity remains the primary challenge for our country, with youth unable to get a decent career start, those working hard in full-time jobs with few results after the living expenses are met, and people across the country without any actual expectation their children will be able to do improve in life than they have.

Elected officials can talk about fairer opportunities as much as they want. Yet where is the political group that has the comprehensive policy agenda on equal opportunity? I see none. Whichever party succeeds initially, succeeds. Not just for their party, but, crucially, for a entire nation that has desperately requires fair chances so urgently.