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While the struggling Conservative party meets in its conference city for its yearly gathering, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its path forward. Doubt remains if a clear direction remains open. We are in difficult days for a political party that now has little, if anything, new or unique to say to voters.

What Could Have Been

Things could have turned out so different if real advances had been made on an agenda that resonates with people nationwide: Equal opportunity. However Boris Johnson’s government lacked the slightest idea on how to transform his zeitgeisty rhetoric on levelling up into actual implementation. Over twenty-four months after the 2019 election, it argued over what the term truly represented.

I was perplexed, because I had previously explained to Johnson what social mobility entailed when we first spoke about it during the contest for party leader. The expression was a concept I originated and used at the Department for Education to talk about equal opportunity. This became our departmental mantra, and its meaning is unambiguous: social mobility is the approach by which we realize equal access – not by taking chances away from those who already have it, but rather by providing opportunities to those that don’t.

Fundamental Idea

Another crucial education department term we used, “ability is distributed uniformly throughout the nation, but opportunity is not”, served as a purposeful phrase, embodying the two halves of a social mobility strategy. To begin with, talent spread evenly but not developed consistently through our learning institutions. Additionally, access not provided uniformly by the private sector or our market. Therefore, education and business were key to achieving stronger social mobility. This constituted an mission about the societal structure of our country – fostering people’s potential and connecting them to opportunities.

What Levelling Up Became

How did the social mobility agenda turn into under the previous government? Regional development money administered out of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Street beautification and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. A government strategy was launched almost thirty-six months after the leadership change, which saw ongoing initiatives repackaged under the new levelling up banner.

As a result, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went ignored, as well as all the change that it could have inspired – in funding, business, economic policy, tax and in community development. Additionally, in learning, including a higher education sector that has become a punchbag for leaders across parties – although it remains the primary vehicle of social mobility for individuals from less privileged homes, personally, this country has had over the past 30 years. Maybe the only engine of social mobility, working extensively.

Why Hope Matters

Ambition is essential for our country to prosper. To foster ambition, there needs to be a realistic expectation that dedication and outcome are linked; that if people aspire, they can succeed. For political leadership, being able to instil a outlook of positivity about the tomorrow is important. Analysis by the Institute for Policy Research at Bath University and others, published last month, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I introduced as education secretary – locally targeted strategies to boosting academic achievement – led to students in those areas being up to 18 percentage points more optimistic about their prospects than those in comparable communities without these programmes in place. The research confirms: just making an authentic start on fair opportunity strategies can quickly and positively change how people view their future.

Lost Potential

Ignoring this evidence, and in the throes of its new leader election, in autumn 2022, the ruling party terminated the programmes. What reason would someone in those communities vote for a party that did that? The opportunity areas policy is a clear case of what might have become a revolutionary Conservative government agenda on levelling up, but that chance was completely wasted. Approaches such as this can generate optimism and ambition. In contrast, as the Tories discovered, reneging on commitments of equal opportunity is the most expensive error any leadership can make. The public held accountable the administration for its ineffectiveness but, above all, for its broken promises on social mobility.

Present Circumstances

Currently the mandate on life chances and equality of opportunity has been transferred to a opposition party. The previous terminology has been discarded. The new government has its own public messaging of “eliminating hurdles to advancement”. The organization that is steadily supplanting the struggling incumbents, the alternative party, also has its own terminology – “industrial revival”. This expression to talk about new opportunities in communities like the one I was raised in, in the region. It claims that an historical manufacturing base can be reborn into an industrial future.

To the electorate, it must feel like a Groundhog Day-style loop. Identical problem, different language. Yet, currently, little improvement.

What Must Change

If Labour and Reform UK want to escape the same fate, the respective organizations should learn from the Tories’ mistakes on levelling up; that social mobility rhetoric is one thing, but successful delivery of improved opportunities is far more challenging. Britain’s persistently low social mobility remains the central problem for our country, with the next generation unable to get a decent career start, those putting in effort in employment with little to show after the housing costs are covered, and individuals nationwide without any real hope their children will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Elected officials can mention improved access as much as they want. However, which party has the political group that has the complete plan on equal opportunity? None appear to exist. The first to achieve this, prevails. Not only for their party, but, significantly, for a whole country that has urgently needs equal access so urgently.