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As the existentially challenged Conservative party convenes in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its next steps. It’s not even clear if a road forward is available. We are in difficult days 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 vastly better if real advances had been made on an priority that is important for people across the country: Levelling up. However Boris Johnson’s government did not possess the first clue on how to transform the popular slogan on levelling up into concrete action. Over twenty-four months after the 2019 election, it discussed what the term even meant.

I found it bizarre, because I had previously explained to the Prime Minister what social mobility entailed when we originally talked about it during the contest for party leader. The phrase was a concept I originated and used at the Department for Education to talk about life chances. It served as our guiding principle, and its meaning is straightforward: levelling up is the method by which we realize equality of opportunity – without removing opportunity away from those who possess it, but rather by expanding chances to those that lack them.

The Core Concept

Another crucial education department term we used, “potential is equally shared across our country, but opportunity is not”, again was a purposeful phrase, embodying the dual components of a fairness agenda. To begin with, ability distributed uniformly but not nurtured uniformly through our education system. Furthermore, opportunities not spread evenly by the private sector or our economic system. Thus, schools and companies were key to achieving better life chances. This constituted an agenda about the societal structure of our country – fostering human talent and connecting them to chances.

What Levelling Up Became

What did the social mobility agenda turn into under the previous government? Regional development money overseen from the DLUHC. Hanging baskets and redeveloped traffic systems. A government strategy was published a significant period after the leadership change, which saw existing policy approaches repackaged under the new levelling up banner.

As a result, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went undeveloped, as well as all the reform that it may have generated – in capital, business, financial planning, taxation and in community development. Additionally, in schooling, including a higher education sector 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, including myself, this country has had in recent decades. Maybe the sole mechanism of social mobility, working extensively.

The Role of Ambition

Hope is vital for our country to succeed. To foster ambition, there needs to be a realistic expectation that effort and reward are connected; that if people aspire, they can attain. For all administrations, being able to instil a feeling of hope about the tomorrow is important. Analysis by the Institute for Policy Research at the academic establishment and others, published last month, showed that the DfE’s 12 “opportunity areas” I established during my tenure – place-based approaches to boosting academic achievement – led to students in those communities being up to nearly one-fifth more positive about their prospects than those in equivalent locations without these schemes in place. The data shows: just making an authentic start on pro-social mobility policy can rapidly and effectively change how people perceive their destiny.

Missed Opportunities

Oblivious to this, and in the throes of its new leader election, in autumn 2022, the Conservative government ended the initiatives. Why should any person in those areas vote for a organization that took that action? This specific initiative is one example of what might have become a game-changing administration strategy on levelling up, but that possibility was completely wasted. Approaches such as this can generate optimism and ambition. In contrast, as the Conservatives learned, reneging on commitments of social mobility is the most expensive error any government can make. Voters punished the government for its ineffectiveness but, primarily, for its broken promises on equal opportunity.

The Current Landscape

At present the baton on life chances and equality of opportunity has passed to a opposition party. The previous terminology has been discarded. Labour has its own public messaging of “removing obstacles to success”. The party that is gradually replacing the failing Tories, the challenger, also has its own language – “economic renewal”. The terminology to talk about new opportunities in communities like the one I was raised in, in the region. It suggests that an former economic strength can revive into an revitalized economy.

To the electorate, it must appear as a repetitive cycle. Same issue, alternative phrasing. But – as yet – no results.

What Must Change

Whether the government and opposition want to prevent the identical outcome, each group should understand the Tories’ mistakes on levelling up; that social mobility rhetoric is simple terminology, but actual achievement of more equal results is far more challenging. Our nation’s chronically poor equal opportunity remains the primary challenge for our country, with youth unable to get a proper professional launch, those working hard in occupations with minimal progress after the housing costs are covered, and people across the country without any genuine belief their next generation will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Politicians can discuss fairer opportunities repeatedly. However, which party has the organization that has the comprehensive policy agenda on social mobility? I see none. Whoever gets there first, succeeds. Not only for themselves, but, more importantly, for a complete society that has desperately requires equality of opportunity so badly.