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While the existentially challenged Conservative party gathers in its conference city for its annual party conference, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its next steps. It’s not even clear if a viable path exists at all. We are in tough times for a governing group 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 nationwide: Levelling up. But the previous administration hadn’t got the slightest idea on how to transform his zeitgeisty rhetoric on levelling up into actual implementation. For the two years after the 2019 election, it discussed what the term even meant.

It seemed strange to me, because I had previously explained to Johnson what social mobility entailed when we initially discussed about it during his leadership campaign. The phrase was a term I developed and used at the DfE to talk about life chances. It served as our guiding principle, and its meaning is unambiguous: levelling up is the approach by which we realize fair chances – not through reducing prospects away from those who possess it, but rather by providing opportunities to those that don’t.

The Core Concept

The other key DfE phrase we used, “potential is equally shared throughout the nation, but opportunity is not”, represented another a purposeful phrase, reflecting the dual components of a fairness agenda. To begin with, ability distributed uniformly but not nurtured uniformly through our learning institutions. Furthermore, chances not distributed fairly by businesses or our economy. Thus, schools and companies were key to achieving better life chances. This represented an agenda about the community framework of our country – supporting individual capabilities and providing access to opportunities.

The Reality of Implementation

How did the social mobility agenda become under Johnson’s Conservatives? Regional development money managed by the the relevant ministry. Hanging baskets and rearranged intersections. An official policy document was launched a significant period after Johnson became leader, which saw ongoing initiatives repackaged under the new levelling up banner.

As a result, a broader social mobility agenda went ignored, as well as all the change that it could have inspired – in funding, enterprise, financial planning, revenue and in community development. Moreover, in education, including a tertiary education 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, personally, this country has had throughout modern times. Maybe the primary source of equal opportunity, operating at scale.

Why Hope Matters

Ambition is crucial for our country to succeed. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a realistic expectation that effort and reward are connected; that if people aim high, they can succeed. For any government, being able to create a feeling of hope about the future is important. Research by the Institute for Policy Research at Bath University and others, published last month, showed that the DfE’s 12 “opportunity areas” I introduced as education secretary – locally targeted strategies to boosting academic achievement – led to students in those areas being up to nearly one-fifth more optimistic about their life ahead than those in equivalent locations without these initiatives in place. The research confirms: just making an sincere effort on equal chance initiatives can quickly and positively change how people feel about their prospects.

Missed Opportunities

Oblivious to this, and in the middle of its new leader election, in autumn 2022, the Conservative government closed opportunity areas down. Why should any person in those communities vote for a party that did that? The targeted programme is a single instance of what had the potential to be a transformative Tory policy platform on social mobility, but that possibility was totally misused. Methods such as this can generate optimism and ambition. On the other hand, as the Tories learned, breaking the promise of fair chances is the biggest blunder any government can make. The electorate punished the leadership for its incompetence but, above all, for its unfulfilled commitments on social mobility.

The Current Landscape

Currently the mandate on social mobility and equal chances has been transferred to a Labour government. The previous terminology has been cast off. The new government has its own policy language of “removing obstacles to success”. The party that is steadily supplanting the failing Tories, the alternative party, also has its own language – “economic renewal”. This expression to talk about fresh prospects in areas like the one I come from, in my hometown. It claims that an industrial past can revive into an revitalized economy.

To the electorate, it must feel like a Groundhog Day-style loop. Identical problem, different language. However, so far, no progress.

Lessons for the Future

Whether the government and opposition want to prevent the same fate, the respective organizations should take lessons from the previous government’s errors on levelling up; that equal opportunity talk is simple terminology, but successful delivery of improved opportunities is significantly more difficult. Our nation’s endemically weak life chances remains the key issue for our country, with youth unable to get a decent career start, those laboring in full-time jobs with few results after the housing costs are covered, and individuals nationwide without any real hope their offspring will be able to do advance in life than they have.

Elected officials can discuss fairer opportunities repeatedly. But where is the organization that has the comprehensive policy agenda on equal opportunity? I observe no such party. Whoever gets there first, succeeds. Not only for their party, but, crucially, for a whole country that has desperately requires equal access so urgently.