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While the beleaguered Conservative party convenes in Manchester for its annual party conference, it has plenty to consider regarding its future direction. Doubt remains if a clear direction is available. We are in challenging circumstances for a governing group that now has very little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the public.

What Could Have Been

The situation might have been vastly better if tangible progress had been made on an priority that matters to people across the country: Equal opportunity. However the former leadership hadn’t got the slightest idea on how to convert the trendy talk on levelling up into policy reality. For the two years after the general election, it argued over what the phrase truly represented.

I found it bizarre, because I’d already told the Prime Minister what social mobility entailed when we originally talked about it during the contest for party leader. This terminology was language I created and used at the DfE to talk about equal opportunity. It served as our core mission, and its purpose is unambiguous: levelling up is the approach by which we realize equal access – not through reducing opportunity away from those who already have it, but rather by providing opportunities to those that don’t.

The Core Concept

An additional vital education department term we used, “ability is distributed uniformly around the UK, but opportunity is not”, again was a deliberate expression, representing the two parts of a social mobility strategy. Initially, ability distributed uniformly but not nurtured uniformly through our schools and colleges. Second, opportunities not spread evenly by businesses or our economy. Therefore, learning and employment were key to achieving stronger social mobility. This was an mission about the societal structure of our country – fostering individual capabilities and connecting them to prospects.

What Levelling Up Became

What did levelling up evolve into under Johnson’s Conservatives? Regional development money overseen from the the relevant ministry. Street beautification and redeveloped traffic systems. An official policy document was released nearly three years after the Prime Minister took office, which saw ongoing initiatives rebadged under the new levelling up banner.

Therefore, a broader social mobility agenda went unpursued, as well as all the reform that it may have generated – in funding, commerce, financial planning, tax and in community development. Additionally, in learning, including a university system that has become a scapegoat for leaders across parties – even though it remains the primary vehicle of upward movement for young working-class people, personally, this country has had throughout modern times. Possibly the only engine of social mobility, working extensively.

The Importance of Aspiration

Ambition is essential 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 dream big, they can succeed. For political leadership, being able to foster a sense of optimism about the years ahead is important. Research by the academic institution at the university and others, newly available, showed that the ministry’s focus zones I launched while in office – place-based approaches to enhancing learning results – led to students in those communities being up to 18 percentage points more optimistic about their prospects than those in similar areas without these schemes in place. The research confirms: just making an authentic start on fair opportunity strategies can swiftly and beneficially change how people feel about their prospects.

Squandered Chances

Ignoring this evidence, and in the throes of its successor selection process, in September 2022, the Tory administration terminated the programmes. What reason would someone in those communities vote for a political group that took that action? The targeted programme is one example of what might have become a transformative Conservative government agenda on levelling up, but that possibility was hopelessly squandered. Strategies such as this can create belief and drive. On the other hand, as the ruling party learned, failing to deliver of social mobility is the costliest mistake any political party can make. The public held accountable the government for its failure but, perhaps most of all, for its broken promises on equal opportunity.

Present Circumstances

Now the baton on equal opportunity and equality of opportunity has been taken up by a opposition party. The levelling up rhetoric has been abandoned. The new government has its own public messaging of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The organization that is steadily supplanting the struggling Tories, Reform UK, also has its own language – “reindustrialisation”. It’s a phrase to talk about additional chances in regions like the one I was raised in, in the region. It promises that an former economic strength can revive into an modern manufacturing sector.

For the public, it must appear as a Groundhog Day-style loop. Similar challenge, different language. But – as yet – no results.

Lessons for the Future

Whether the government and opposition want to avoid the identical outcome, the respective organizations should take lessons from the Conservatives’ failure on levelling up; that social mobility rhetoric is easy to say, but effective implementation 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 proper professional launch, those laboring in employment 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 advance in life than they have.

Elected officials can mention improved access as much as they want. Yet where is the party that has the thorough strategy on social mobility? None appear to exist. Whoever gets there first, succeeds. Not only for themselves, but, crucially, for a entire nation that has urgently needs fair chances so urgently.