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While the struggling Tories meets in its conference city for its annual party conference, it has plenty to consider regarding its future direction. There is uncertainty if a viable path remains open. We are in tough times for a governing group that now has little, if anything, new or unique to say to the public.

An Alternate Reality

The situation might have been markedly improved if real advances had been made on an priority that resonates with people across the country: Levelling up. Yet Boris Johnson’s government hadn’t got the basic understanding on how to convert his zeitgeisty rhetoric on levelling up into policy reality. Over twenty-four months after the 2019 election, it argued over what the concept truly represented.

I was perplexed, because I had previously explained to the Prime Minister what social mobility entailed when we first spoke about it during his leadership campaign. The expression was a term I developed and used at the Department for Education to talk about life chances. This became our core mission, and its purpose is straightforward: levelling up is the approach by which we achieve equal access – not by taking opportunity away from those who already have it, but rather by providing opportunities to those that lack them.

The Core Concept

The other key education department term we used, “potential is equally shared throughout the nation, yet chances are not”, served as a deliberate expression, reflecting the dual components of a fairness agenda. First, potential shared equally but not nurtured uniformly through our education system. Second, chances not distributed fairly by the private sector or our market. Therefore, learning and employment were essential to achieving stronger social mobility. This represented an agenda about the societal structure of our country – supporting individual capabilities and linking them with opportunities.

What Levelling Up Became

How did levelling up evolve into under the Tory administration? Local investment schemes managed by the DLUHC. Decorative floral displays and rearranged intersections. An official policy document was launched a significant period after the leadership change, which saw ongoing initiatives rebadged under the fresh social mobility slogan.

Consequently, a wider fairness strategy went ignored, as well as all the reform that it could have inspired – in funding, enterprise, economic policy, tax and in community development. Moreover, in schooling, including a higher education sector that has become a punchbag for leaders across parties – even though it remains the most powerful engine of upward movement for individuals from less privileged homes, personally, this country has had over the past 30 years. Maybe the sole mechanism of fair chances, operating at scale.

The Importance of Aspiration

Aspiration is vital for our country to thrive. To foster ambition, there needs to be a believable feeling that dedication and outcome are linked; that if people dream big, they can attain. For political leadership, being able to create a outlook of positivity about the future is crucial. Research by the academic institution at the academic establishment and others, published last month, showed that the ministry’s focus zones I established during my tenure – community-focused methods to improving education outcomes – led to young people in those communities being up to 18 percentage points more hopeful about their future than those in equivalent locations without these schemes in place. The research confirms: just making an genuine beginning on pro-social mobility policy can rapidly and effectively change how people feel about their future.

Missed Opportunities

Ignoring this evidence, and in the throes of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in September 2022, the ruling party closed opportunity areas down. Why would anyone in those regions vote for a party that made that decision? The targeted programme is a clear case of what might have become a revolutionary Conservative government agenda on levelling up, but that possibility was completely wasted. Methods such as this can create belief and drive. Conversely, as the ruling party discovered, breaking the promise of fair chances is the costliest mistake any government can make. The public held accountable the government for its failure but, primarily, for its failed pledges on levelling up.

The Current Landscape

At present the baton on social mobility and equal chances has been taken up by a Labour government. The previous terminology has been discarded. The new government has its own policy language of “removing obstacles to success”. The political group that is steadily supplanting the failing incumbents, the alternative party, also has its own message – “economic renewal”. The terminology to talk about fresh prospects in regions like the one I grew up in, in South Yorkshire. It claims that an industrial past can reincarnate into an revitalized economy.

To the electorate, it must appear as a déjà vu experience. Similar challenge, alternative phrasing. Yet, currently, little improvement.

The Way Forward

Whether the government and opposition want to avoid the same fate, the respective organizations should take lessons from the Tories’ mistakes on levelling up; that social mobility rhetoric is one thing, but effective implementation of fairer outcomes is far more challenging. Our nation’s endemically weak social mobility remains the primary challenge for our country, with young people unable to get a good job beginning, those laboring in full-time jobs with minimal progress after the living expenses are met, and individuals nationwide without any actual expectation their offspring will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Politicians can talk about fairer opportunities however much they like. But where is the organization that has the comprehensive policy agenda on life chances? I see none. Whoever gets there first, wins. Not just for themselves, but, crucially, for a entire nation that has urgently needs equal access so urgently.