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While the existentially challenged Conservative party gathers in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has plenty to consider regarding its next steps. It’s not even clear if a road forward exists at all. We are in difficult days for a political party that now has little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the public.

What Could Have Been

The situation might have been vastly better if concrete steps had been made on an agenda that resonates with people across the country: Levelling up. However the former leadership hadn’t got the basic understanding on how to transform the popular slogan on social mobility into actual implementation. Over twenty-four months after the general election, it argued over what the term truly represented.

I found it bizarre, because I’d already told Johnson what social mobility entailed when we initially discussed about it during the contest for party leader. The phrase was language I created and used at the DfE to talk about social mobility. It served as our guiding principle, and its definition is straightforward: levelling up is the method by which we realize equal access – not through reducing opportunity away from those who possess it, but rather by extending opportunities to those that lack them.

The Core Concept

Another crucial education department term we used, “potential is equally shared throughout the nation, but opportunity is not”, again was a purposeful phrase, embodying the two parts of a equal opportunity plan. Initially, potential shared equally but not nurtured uniformly through our education system. Second, access not provided uniformly by businesses or our economic system. Therefore, education and business were crucial to achieving stronger social mobility. This represented an priority about the societal structure of our country – investing in human talent and connecting them to prospects.

The Reality of Implementation

What did levelling up evolve into under Johnson’s Conservatives? Regional development money managed by the the relevant ministry. Hanging baskets and rearranged intersections. A government strategy was launched almost thirty-six months after the leadership change, which saw ongoing initiatives repackaged under the recently branded agenda.

Therefore, a broader social mobility agenda went undeveloped, as well as all the improvement that it may have generated – in funding, enterprise, financial planning, tax and in local regeneration. Moreover, in schooling, including a higher education sector that has become a punchbag for elected officials – although it remains the most powerful engine of social mobility for individuals from less privileged homes, including myself, this country has had throughout modern times. Possibly the primary source of social mobility, working extensively.

The Role of Ambition

Hope is crucial for our country to prosper. For hope to exist, there needs to be a believable feeling that hard work and results are related; that if people aspire, they can achieve. For any government, being able to create a feeling of hope about the future is important. Studies by the research body at the university and others, recently released, showed that the ministry’s focus zones I launched while in office – locally targeted strategies to enhancing learning results – led to youth in those areas being up to nearly one-fifth more optimistic about their future than those in equivalent locations without these programmes in place. The evidence is clear: just making an sincere effort on equal chance initiatives can quickly and positively change how people perceive their prospects.

Squandered Chances

Unaware of these findings, and in the midst of its successor selection process, in September 2022, the Tory administration ended the initiatives. Why would anyone in those areas vote for a party that did that? The opportunity areas policy is a clear case of what had the potential to be a revolutionary administration strategy on levelling up, but that opportunity was totally misused. Strategies such as this can generate optimism and ambition. Conversely, as the Tories found out, failing to deliver of equal opportunity is the costliest mistake any political party can make. Voters held accountable the administration for its failure but, perhaps most of all, for its failed pledges on social mobility.

The Current Landscape

Now the baton on equal opportunity and equality of opportunity has passed to a opposition party. The levelling up rhetoric has been abandoned. Labour has its own political rhetoric of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The political group that is steadily supplanting the hapless Tories, the alternative party, also has its own language – “economic renewal”. It’s a phrase to talk about new opportunities in areas like the one I come from, in my hometown. It claims that an historical manufacturing base can revive into an industrial future.

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

Lessons for the Future

If Labour and Reform UK want to avoid the identical outcome, both these parties should learn from the previous government’s errors on levelling up; that fair chance language is simple terminology, but effective implementation of improved opportunities is much harder. The UK’s persistently low social mobility remains the primary challenge for our country, with youth unable to get a proper professional launch, those working hard in employment with little to show after the housing costs are covered, and individuals nationwide without any actual expectation their offspring will be able to do advance in life than they have.

Leaders can discuss equal chances repeatedly. However, which party has the organization that has the comprehensive policy agenda on life chances? None appear to exist. Whichever party succeeds initially, prevails. Not only for their party, but, significantly, for a whole country that has urgently needs equal access so desperately.