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As the struggling Conservative party meets in Manchester for its annual party conference, it has much to ponder regarding its path forward. It’s not even clear if a road forward remains open. We are in challenging circumstances for a governing group that now has very little, if anything, new or unique to say to the electorate.

The Missed Opportunity

Things could have turned out markedly improved if concrete steps had been made on an agenda that matters to people throughout the UK: Social mobility. Yet the previous administration lacked the first clue on how to transform the popular slogan on social mobility into policy reality. During the initial period after the general election, it argued over what the concept even meant.

I was perplexed, because I’d already told the Prime Minister what social mobility meant when we originally talked about it during his leadership campaign. This terminology was a concept I originated and used at the Department for Education to talk about life chances. It served as our core mission, and its purpose is clear: levelling up is the approach by which we attain fair chances – not through reducing chances away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by providing chances to those that don’t.

Fundamental Idea

Another crucial ministry expression we used, “talent is spread evenly around the UK, yet chances are not”, again was a purposeful phrase, representing the two parts of a fairness agenda. First, potential shared equally but not cultivated evenly through our learning institutions. Additionally, chances not distributed fairly by employers or our economic system. As a result, education and business were key to achieving better life chances. This represented an priority about the societal structure of our country – investing in human talent and linking them with prospects.

The Actual Outcome

How did levelling up become under the Tory administration? Regional development money administered out of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Street beautification and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. An official policy document was published almost thirty-six months after the leadership change, which saw existing policy approaches relabelled under the recently branded agenda.

As a result, a broader social mobility agenda went ignored, as well as all the change that it could have inspired – in investment, business, economic policy, taxation and in place-making. Additionally, in education, including a tertiary education that has become a target for politicians of all stripes – although it remains the strongest driver of life improvement for individuals from less privileged homes, like me, this country has had in recent decades. Perhaps the sole mechanism of fair chances, operating at scale.

Why Hope Matters

Hope is vital 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 aspire, they can attain. For political leadership, being able to foster a sense of optimism about the future is crucial. Research by the Institute for Policy Research at the academic establishment and others, recently released, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I introduced as education secretary – locally targeted strategies to enhancing learning results – led to young people in those communities being up to a significant margin more optimistic about their prospects than those in similar areas without these initiatives in place. The research confirms: just making an sincere effort on pro-social mobility policy can quickly and positively change how people view their future.

Missed Opportunities

Ignoring this evidence, and in the middle of its successor selection process, in autumn 2022, the ruling party closed opportunity areas down. Why should any person in those communities vote for a organization that took that action? The targeted programme is one example of what had the potential to be a transformative Tory policy platform on social mobility, but that opportunity was totally misused. Methods such as this can inspire hope and aspiration. In contrast, as the Tories learned, breaking the promise of equal opportunity is the biggest blunder any government can make. The electorate held accountable the administration for its ineffectiveness but, primarily, for its failed pledges on equal opportunity.

Present Circumstances

Now the mandate on social mobility and equality of opportunity has passed to a opposition party. The levelling up rhetoric has been abandoned. The current administration has its own political rhetoric of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The political group that is gradually replacing the struggling Conservative party, the alternative party, also has its own language – “economic renewal”. This expression to talk about additional chances in communities like the one I grew up in, in my hometown. It promises that an historical manufacturing base can revive into an revitalized economy.

To the electorate, it must seem like a repetitive cycle. Same issue, new terminology. Yet, currently, little improvement.

The Way Forward

Whether the government and opposition want to escape the identical outcome, each group should take lessons from the previous government’s errors on social mobility; that social mobility rhetoric is easy to say, but successful delivery of improved opportunities is significantly more difficult. Britain’s chronically poor social mobility remains the central problem for our country, with youth unable to get a proper professional launch, those laboring in full-time jobs with few results after the housing costs are covered, and citizens throughout the UK without any real hope their children will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Politicians can talk about equal chances however much they like. But where is the organization that has the thorough strategy on social mobility? None appear to exist. Whichever party succeeds initially, succeeds. Not only for themselves, but, significantly, for a entire nation that has never needed fair chances so urgently.