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While the existentially challenged Tories convenes in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has plenty to consider regarding its future direction. There is uncertainty if a clear direction is available. We are in difficult days for a political party that now has almost nothing, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the electorate.

What Could Have Been

Things could have turned out vastly better if real advances had been made on an policy focus that matters to people throughout the UK: Social mobility. But the previous administration lacked the basic understanding on how to transform the trendy talk on social mobility into policy reality. During the initial period after the 2019 election, it argued over what the term actually signified.

It seemed strange to me, because I had previously explained to Johnson what levelling up signified when we first spoke about it during his leadership campaign. This terminology was a term I developed and used at the education ministry to talk about life chances. It was our departmental mantra, and its meaning is straightforward: social mobility is the approach by which we achieve equal access – not through reducing opportunity away from those who already have it, but rather by extending options to those that lack them.

The Core Concept

The other key DfE phrase we used, “ability is distributed uniformly throughout the nation, yet chances are not”, served as a deliberate expression, embodying the dual components of a social mobility strategy. First, ability distributed uniformly but not cultivated evenly through our schools and colleges. Furthermore, opportunities not spread evenly by the private sector or our market. As a result, schools and companies were crucial to achieving better life chances. This was an priority about the community framework of our country – supporting human talent and connecting them to opportunities.

The Actual Outcome

How did levelling up turn into under the previous government? A towns fund managed by the DLUHC. Hanging baskets and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. A white paper was launched almost thirty-six months after the leadership change, which saw existing policy approaches repackaged under the fresh social mobility slogan.

Consequently, a wider fairness strategy went unpursued, as well as all the change that it could have inspired – in investment, commerce, financial planning, tax and in place-making. Additionally, in education, including a higher education sector that has become a target for leaders across parties – even though it remains the most powerful engine of social mobility for young working-class people, personally, this country has had throughout modern times. Maybe the primary source of fair chances, working extensively.

Why Hope Matters

Hope is essential for our country to prosper. To foster ambition, there needs to be a believable feeling that effort and reward are linked; that if people aspire, they can achieve. For political leadership, being able to instil a feeling of hope about the future is crucial. Research by the Institute for Policy Research at the university and others, published last month, showed that the DfE’s 12 “opportunity areas” I introduced as education secretary – place-based approaches to enhancing learning results – led to young people in those neighborhoods being up to 18 percentage points more positive about their future than those in equivalent locations without these initiatives in place. The evidence is clear: just making an authentic start on fair opportunity strategies can rapidly and effectively change how people feel about their future.

Squandered Chances

Unaware of these findings, and in the midst of its new leader election, in autumn 2022, the ruling party closed opportunity areas down. Why should any person in those communities vote for a party that did that? The targeted programme is a clear case of what might have become a transformative administration strategy on social mobility, but that chance was totally misused. Methods such as this can create belief and drive. On the other hand, as the Conservatives discovered, failing to deliver of social mobility is the costliest mistake any government can make. The public penalized the government for its ineffectiveness but, above all, for its failed pledges on levelling up.

Today’s Political Reality

At present the mandate on social mobility and fair access has passed to a new administration. The levelling up rhetoric has been abandoned. The current administration has its own policy language of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The organization that is steadily supplanting the failing Conservative party, the challenger, also has its own language – “industrial revival”. It’s a phrase to talk about fresh prospects in areas like the one I was raised in, in the region. It promises that an industrial past can revive into an industrial future.

For the public, it must appear as a repetitive cycle. Similar challenge, new terminology. Yet, currently, little improvement.

Lessons for the Future

Whether the government and opposition want to escape the identical outcome, each group should understand the Conservatives’ failure on social mobility; that fair chance language is easy to say, but actual achievement of more equal results is significantly more difficult. Our nation’s endemically weak social mobility remains the primary challenge for our country, with youth unable to get a good job beginning, those putting in effort in employment with little to show after the living expenses are met, and individuals nationwide without any actual expectation their children will be able to do improve in life than they have.

Politicians can talk about improved access however much they like. However, which party has the party that has the thorough strategy on equal opportunity? I observe no such party. Whichever party succeeds initially, succeeds. Not just for their organization, but, crucially, for a complete society that has desperately requires equality of opportunity so badly.