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While the existentially challenged Tories gathers in Manchester for its annual party conference, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its path forward. It’s not even clear if a clear direction remains open. These are difficult days for a governing group that now has almost nothing, if anything, new or unique to say to the electorate.

The Missed Opportunity

The situation might have been so different if concrete steps had been made on an priority that is important for people throughout the UK: Levelling up. However the former leadership hadn’t got the basic understanding on how to convert the popular slogan on social mobility into policy reality. Over twenty-four months after the 2019 election, it discussed what the phrase even meant.

I was perplexed, because I had clearly defined for Johnson what levelling up entailed when we first spoke about it during his leadership campaign. The expression was language I created and used at the education ministry to talk about equal opportunity. This became our core mission, and its definition is unambiguous: levelling up is the means by which we realize fair chances – not through reducing opportunity away from those who already have it, but rather by expanding options to those that are without.

The Core Concept

An additional vital ministry expression we used, “potential is equally shared throughout the nation, yet chances are not”, again was a intentional wording, representing the two halves of a equal opportunity plan. To begin with, potential shared equally but not developed consistently through our education system. Additionally, opportunities not spread evenly by businesses or our economy. Therefore, learning and employment were key to achieving improved equality of opportunity. This represented an priority about the social fabric of our country – investing in people’s potential and connecting them to opportunities.

What Levelling Up Became

How did levelling up evolve into under the previous government? A towns fund administered out of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Decorative floral displays and redeveloped traffic systems. A government strategy was released almost thirty-six months after the Prime Minister took office, which saw current strategies repackaged under the recently branded agenda.

Therefore, a wider fairness strategy went undeveloped, as well as all the reform that it may have generated – in funding, enterprise, financial planning, revenue and in local regeneration. Additionally, in education, including a tertiary education that has become a target for politicians of all stripes – although it remains the most powerful engine of social mobility for youth from modest backgrounds, including myself, this country has had in recent decades. Maybe the only engine of fair chances, operating at scale.

Why Hope Matters

Aspiration is essential for our country to prosper. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a credible sense that effort and reward are connected; that if people aim high, they can succeed. For all administrations, being able to foster a feeling of hope about the tomorrow is critical. Studies by the academic institution at the university and others, published last month, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I introduced as education secretary – community-focused methods to enhancing learning results – led to youth in those communities being up to a significant margin more hopeful about their prospects than those in similar areas without these programmes in place. The research confirms: just making an sincere effort on fair opportunity strategies can quickly and positively change how people view their prospects.

Squandered Chances

Unaware of these findings, and in the throes of its new leader election, in September 2022, the Conservative government closed opportunity areas down. Why would anyone in those areas vote for a organization that did that? The targeted programme is a single instance of what could have been a game-changing Conservative government agenda on social mobility, but that possibility was completely wasted. Approaches such as this can generate optimism and ambition. In contrast, as the Tories discovered, reneging on commitments of equal opportunity is the most expensive error any government can make. The public punished the government for its ineffectiveness but, above all, for its unfulfilled commitments on levelling up.

Present Circumstances

Currently the responsibility on life chances and equal chances has passed to a opposition party. The previous terminology has been discarded. The current administration has its own public messaging of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The organization that is increasingly displacing the struggling Conservative party, the alternative party, also has its own terminology – “reindustrialisation”. This expression to talk about new opportunities in regions like the one I grew up in, in my hometown. It promises that an historical manufacturing base can revive into an modern manufacturing sector.

To the electorate, it must seem like a Groundhog Day-style loop. Same issue, different language. But – as yet – no results.

What Must Change

Should the current and alternative parties want to prevent the similar destiny, the respective organizations should learn from the Tories’ mistakes on social mobility; that social mobility rhetoric is simple terminology, but effective implementation of more equal results is significantly more difficult. The UK’s persistently low equal opportunity remains the primary challenge for our country, with the next generation unable to get a proper professional launch, those working hard in full-time jobs with little to show after the living expenses are met, and individuals nationwide without any actual expectation their offspring will be able to do advance in life than they have.

Elected officials can discuss improved access however much they like. But where is the party that has the thorough strategy on equal opportunity? I observe no such party. The first to achieve this, prevails. Not only for their party, but, crucially, for a complete society that has desperately requires equality of opportunity so badly.