🔗 Share this article

As the existentially challenged Tories gathers in its conference city for its yearly gathering, it has plenty to consider regarding its next steps. There is uncertainty if a clear direction exists at all. These are challenging circumstances for a governing group that now has little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the electorate.

The Missed Opportunity

The situation might have been markedly improved if real advances had been made on an policy focus that matters to people across the country: Social mobility. However the former leadership hadn’t got the first clue on how to turn the trendy talk on social mobility into concrete action. Over twenty-four months after the general election, it discussed what the term truly represented.

It seemed strange to me, because I’d already told the Prime Minister what levelling up entailed when we first spoke about it during his leadership campaign. The expression was a term I developed and used at the education ministry to talk about social mobility. It served as our departmental mantra, and its meaning is unambiguous: social mobility is the approach by which we attain equal access – not by taking opportunity away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by providing options to those that don’t.

The Core Concept

The other key education department term we used, “potential is equally shared across our country, but opportunity is not”, again was a purposeful phrase, reflecting the dual components of a social mobility strategy. First, talent spread evenly but not cultivated evenly through our schools and colleges. Furthermore, opportunities not spread evenly by businesses or our economic system. As a result, schools and companies were crucial to achieving better life chances. This constituted an mission about the community framework of our country – investing in people’s potential and providing access to prospects.

What Levelling Up Became

How did levelling up turn into under the previous government? A towns fund administered out of the DLUHC. Street beautification and redeveloped traffic systems. A government strategy was launched nearly three years after the leadership change, which saw ongoing initiatives repackaged under the recently branded agenda.

Therefore, a wider fairness strategy went unpursued, as well as all the reform that it may have generated – in investment, enterprise, economic policy, taxation and in place-making. Additionally, in schooling, including a university system that has become a scapegoat for politicians of all stripes – even though it remains the most powerful engine of life improvement for young working-class people, including myself, this country has had over the past 30 years. Perhaps the primary source of fair chances, functioning widely.

The Role of Ambition

Hope is vital for our country to succeed. For hope to exist, there needs to be a credible sense that effort and reward are linked; that if people aim high, they can attain. For political leadership, being able to instil a sense of optimism about the tomorrow is crucial. Studies by the academic institution at the academic establishment and others, newly available, showed that the DfE’s 12 “opportunity areas” I established during my tenure – place-based approaches to enhancing learning results – led to youth in those communities being up to a significant margin more optimistic 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 rapidly and effectively change how people view their prospects.

Lost Potential

Ignoring this evidence, and in the throes of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in that period, the ruling party closed opportunity areas down. What reason would someone in those areas vote for a organization that took that action? This specific initiative is a clear case of what could have been a game-changing administration strategy on levelling up, but that chance was completely wasted. Approaches such as this can create belief and drive. In contrast, as the Conservatives learned, reneging on commitments of fair chances is the most expensive error any government can make. Voters penalized the leadership for its incompetence but, perhaps most of all, for its broken promises on social mobility.

The Current Landscape

At present the mandate on social mobility and equal chances has been transferred to a opposition party. The previous terminology has been cast off. The current administration has its own policy language of “removing obstacles to success”. The party that is increasingly displacing the hapless Conservative party, the alternative party, also has its own language – “economic renewal”. The terminology to talk about additional chances in areas like the one I come from, in my hometown. It suggests that an historical manufacturing base can revive into an industrial future.

For the public, it must seem like a repetitive cycle. Same issue, new terminology. However, so far, no progress.

What Must Change

If Labour and Reform UK want to prevent the identical outcome, both these parties should take lessons from the Conservatives’ failure on social mobility; that social mobility rhetoric is simple terminology, but actual achievement of more equal results is significantly more difficult. Britain’s chronically poor life chances remains the key issue for our country, with young people unable to get a decent career start, those working hard in full-time jobs with little to show after the living expenses are met, and people across the country without any genuine belief their offspring will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Leaders can talk about equal chances as much as they want. But where is the organization that has the complete plan on equal opportunity? I observe no such party. Whoever gets there first, wins. Not just for their party, but, crucially, for a complete society that has desperately requires equality of opportunity so urgently.