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While the existentially challenged Conservative party gathers in its conference city for its annual party conference, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its next steps. There is uncertainty if a clear direction is available. These are tough times for a political party that now has little, if anything, new or unique to say to the public.

The Missed Opportunity

Things could have turned out so different if real advances had been made on an policy focus that matters to people throughout the UK: Social mobility. Yet Boris Johnson’s government did not possess the slightest idea on how to convert his zeitgeisty rhetoric on levelling up into policy reality. For the two years after the general election, it discussed what the term actually signified.

I was perplexed, because I had previously explained to Johnson what social mobility signified when we initially discussed about it during his leadership campaign. The expression was a concept I originated and used at the education ministry to talk about social mobility. It served as our guiding principle, and its definition is clear: levelling up is the means by which we realize equal access – not through reducing prospects away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by expanding options to those that lack them.

Essential Principle

The other key DfE phrase we used, “potential is equally shared around the UK, yet chances are not”, served as a purposeful phrase, representing the two halves of a social mobility strategy. First, ability distributed uniformly but not cultivated evenly through our schools and colleges. Second, access not provided uniformly by businesses or our market. As a result, education and business were essential to achieving improved equality of opportunity. This was an priority about the social fabric of our country – supporting human talent and connecting them to opportunities.

The Actual Outcome

How did the social mobility agenda become under the previous government? Regional development money overseen from the DLUHC. Street beautification and redeveloped traffic systems. A white paper was published nearly three years after the leadership change, which saw current strategies rebadged under the recently branded agenda.

Consequently, a broader social mobility agenda went undeveloped, as well as all the change that it could have inspired – in investment, business, fiscal strategy, tax and in place-making. Additionally, in schooling, including a higher education sector that has become a punchbag for politicians of all stripes – even though it remains the most powerful engine of upward movement for young working-class people, including myself, this country has had in recent decades. Possibly the primary source of fair chances, operating at scale.

The Role of Ambition

Ambition is essential for our country to thrive. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a credible sense that dedication and outcome are connected; that if people dream big, they can attain. For all administrations, being able to instil a sense of optimism about the years ahead is crucial. Research by the research body at Bath University and others, published last month, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I launched while in office – place-based approaches to improving education outcomes – led to youth in those areas being up to nearly one-fifth more optimistic about their future than those in equivalent locations without these initiatives in place. The data shows: just making an authentic start on equal chance initiatives can rapidly and effectively change how people feel about their destiny.

Missed Opportunities

Oblivious to this, and in the throes of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in autumn 2022, the Tory administration closed opportunity areas down. 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 had the potential to be a game-changing administration strategy on social mobility, but that chance was hopelessly squandered. Strategies such as this can create belief and drive. In contrast, as the ruling party discovered, reneging on commitments of equal opportunity is the costliest mistake any political party can make. The public penalized the government for its ineffectiveness but, above all, for its unfulfilled commitments on levelling up.

The Current Landscape

At present the baton on social mobility and equality of opportunity has passed to a Labour government. The previous terminology has been discarded. Labour has its own public messaging of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The party that is gradually replacing the struggling Conservative party, Reform UK, also has its own message – “reindustrialisation”. The terminology to talk about new opportunities in areas like the one I come from, in South Yorkshire. It claims that an industrial past can be reborn into an revitalized economy.

For the public, it must feel like a Groundhog Day-style loop. Same issue, different language. Yet, currently, little improvement.

The Way Forward

Whether the government and opposition want to prevent the similar destiny, both these parties should understand the Tories’ mistakes on social mobility; that social mobility rhetoric is easy to say, but actual achievement of improved opportunities is significantly more difficult. Our nation’s persistently low equal opportunity remains the primary challenge for our country, with young people unable to get a proper professional launch, those working hard in full-time jobs with little to show after the rent has been paid, and people across the country without any genuine belief their next generation will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Leaders can mention equal chances however much they like. But where is the organization that has the comprehensive policy agenda on life chances? I see none. Whoever gets there first, prevails. Not just for themselves, but, more importantly, for a whole country that has urgently needs fair chances so urgently.