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While the beleaguered Tories meets in its conference city for its annual party conference, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its future direction. It’s not even clear if a viable path is available. We are in difficult days for a political party that now has little, if anything, new or unique to say to the electorate.

What Could Have Been

Things could have turned out vastly better if concrete steps had been made on an policy focus that resonates with people nationwide: Levelling up. Yet the previous administration lacked the basic understanding on how to turn the trendy talk on social mobility into concrete action. During the initial period after the 2019 election, it argued over what the concept truly represented.

It seemed strange to me, because I had previously explained to the Prime Minister what social mobility entailed when we originally talked 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 life chances. It served as our guiding principle, and its meaning is straightforward: social mobility is the approach by which we attain equality of opportunity – not through reducing opportunity away from those who already have it, but rather by extending options to those that lack them.

Essential Principle

The other key DfE phrase we used, “talent is spread evenly around the UK, however access isn’t”, again was a deliberate expression, reflecting the two halves of a social mobility strategy. Initially, potential shared equally but not developed consistently through our learning institutions. Second, chances not distributed fairly by the private sector or our economy. As a result, learning and employment were crucial to achieving stronger social mobility. This was an agenda about the societal structure of our country – investing in human talent and connecting them to prospects.

What Levelling Up Became

What did levelling up evolve into under the Tory administration? A towns fund overseen from the the relevant ministry. Street beautification and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. A white paper was published a significant period after the leadership change, which saw current strategies rebadged 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 learning, including a higher education sector that has become a target for elected officials – despite the fact that it remains the most powerful engine of social mobility for individuals from less privileged homes, like me, this country has had in recent decades. Perhaps the sole mechanism of social mobility, functioning widely.

Why Hope Matters

Ambition is essential for our country to succeed. For hope to exist, there needs to be a credible sense that effort and reward are connected; that if people dream big, they can attain. For all administrations, being able to create a outlook of positivity about the tomorrow is crucial. Research by the academic institution at the academic establishment and others, published last month, showed that the ministry’s focus zones I introduced as education secretary – place-based approaches to improving education outcomes – led to youth in those communities being up to 18 percentage points more hopeful about their future than those in similar areas without these programmes in place. The evidence is clear: just making an genuine beginning on pro-social mobility policy can quickly and positively change how people perceive their destiny.

Squandered Chances

Oblivious to this, and in the midst of its successor selection process, in autumn 2022, the Tory administration terminated the programmes. Why should any person in those regions vote for a organization that did that? The opportunity areas policy is a single instance of what had the potential to be a transformative Tory policy platform on social mobility, but that chance was completely wasted. Strategies such as this can generate optimism and ambition. Conversely, as the ruling party found out, reneging on commitments of social mobility is the costliest mistake any leadership can make. Voters held accountable the leadership for its failure but, perhaps most of all, for its broken promises on equal opportunity.

Today’s Political Reality

At present the mandate on life chances and fair access has been taken up by a new administration. 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 gradually replacing the failing Tories, the challenger, also has its own message – “industrial revival”. It’s a phrase to talk about new opportunities in communities like the one I grew up in, in South Yorkshire. It claims that an historical manufacturing base can reincarnate into an industrial future.

To the electorate, it must seem like a Groundhog Day-style loop. Same issue, different language. However, so far, no progress.

The Way Forward

Should the current and alternative parties want to prevent the similar destiny, each group should learn from the Tories’ mistakes on levelling up; that fair chance language is simple terminology, but successful delivery of improved opportunities is far more challenging. Our nation’s endemically weak social mobility remains the key issue for our country, with the next generation unable to get a proper professional launch, those putting in effort in employment with minimal progress after the rent has been paid, and citizens throughout the UK without any actual expectation their next generation will be able to do improve in life than they have.

Elected officials can discuss fairer opportunities as much as they want. However, which party has the organization that has the complete plan on social mobility? I observe no such party. The first to achieve this, succeeds. Not just for themselves, but, significantly, for a complete society that has never needed fair chances so urgently.