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As the existentially challenged Tories gathers in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has plenty to consider regarding its path forward. There is uncertainty if a clear direction remains open. We are in difficult days for a political party that now has little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the public.

An Alternate Reality

It could have been so different if concrete steps had been made on an priority that matters to people across the country: Social mobility. However Boris Johnson’s government did not possess the slightest idea on how to transform the trendy talk on levelling up into policy reality. For the two years after the 2019 election, it argued over what the phrase truly represented.

I found it bizarre, because I’d already told the Prime Minister what social mobility signified when we first spoke about it during the contest for party leader. This terminology was a term I developed and used at the Department for Education to talk about social mobility. It served as our core mission, and its definition is clear: levelling up is the means by which we achieve equal access – without removing prospects away from those who already have it, but rather by providing chances to those that are without.

Fundamental Idea

Another crucial education department term we used, “ability is distributed uniformly throughout the nation, but opportunity is not”, served as a intentional wording, representing the two halves of a equal opportunity plan. First, ability distributed uniformly but not cultivated evenly through our schools and colleges. Furthermore, opportunities not spread evenly by employers or our economic system. Thus, education and business were essential to achieving better life chances. This was an agenda about the community framework of our country – supporting individual capabilities and providing access to prospects.

The Reality of Implementation

How did the social mobility agenda turn into under the Tory administration? Regional development money administered out of the the relevant ministry. Hanging baskets and redeveloped traffic systems. An official policy document was released almost thirty-six months after the Prime Minister took office, which saw ongoing initiatives rebadged under the new levelling up banner.

Consequently, a broader social mobility agenda went undeveloped, as well as all the reform that it might have driven – in funding, business, fiscal strategy, revenue and in local regeneration. And, of course, in learning, including a higher education sector that has become a target for elected officials – even though it remains the strongest driver of social mobility for young working-class people, personally, this country has had throughout modern times. Maybe the primary source of social mobility, operating at scale.

Why Hope Matters

Hope is vital for our country to prosper. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a realistic expectation that effort and reward are linked; that if people aim high, they can attain. For all administrations, being able to create a outlook of positivity about the years ahead is important. Analysis by the research body at Bath University and others, published last month, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I introduced as education secretary – locally targeted strategies to enhancing learning results – led to young people in those neighborhoods being up to 18 percentage points more hopeful about their future than those in equivalent locations without these schemes in place. The evidence is clear: just making an authentic start on equal chance initiatives can swiftly and beneficially change how people view their future.

Squandered Chances

Unaware of these findings, and in the middle of its new leader election, in autumn 2022, the Tory administration terminated the programmes. Why should any person in those areas vote for a party that made that decision? The targeted programme is a single instance of what could have been a transformative Tory policy platform on social mobility, but that opportunity was totally misused. Strategies such as this can create belief and drive. On the other hand, as the Conservatives learned, failing to deliver of social mobility is the costliest mistake any leadership can make. Voters penalized the government for its incompetence but, perhaps most of all, for its unfulfilled commitments on levelling up.

Present Circumstances

At present the mandate on life chances and equality of opportunity has passed to a new administration. The previous terminology has been abandoned. The current administration has its own public messaging of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The organization that is gradually replacing the hapless incumbents, the alternative party, also has its own message – “reindustrialisation”. This expression to talk about new opportunities in regions like the one I was raised in, in my hometown. It claims that an industrial past can revive into an revitalized economy.

For voters, it must feel like a Groundhog Day-style loop. Same issue, alternative phrasing. However, so far, no progress.

The Way Forward

If Labour and Reform UK want to avoid the identical outcome, both these parties should learn from the Conservatives’ failure on social mobility; that social mobility rhetoric is easy to say, but successful delivery of improved opportunities is much harder. Our nation’s persistently low social mobility remains the key issue for our country, with youth unable to get a proper professional launch, those putting in effort in employment with little to show after the living expenses are met, and citizens throughout the UK without any real hope their offspring will be able to do improve in life than they have.

Politicians can discuss improved access as much as they want. However, which party has the organization that has the comprehensive policy agenda on equal opportunity? None appear to exist. Whoever gets there first, succeeds. Not just for themselves, but, significantly, for a entire nation that has never needed equality of opportunity so desperately.