🔗 Share this article

While the beleaguered Tories meets in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has much to ponder regarding its path forward. It’s not even clear if a clear direction exists at all. These are tough times for a political party that now has little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the public.

The Missed Opportunity

It could have been vastly better if real advances had been made on an priority that is important for people throughout the UK: Equal opportunity. But Boris Johnson’s government lacked the basic understanding on how to turn the trendy talk on levelling up into policy reality. For the two years after the 2019 election, it argued over what the concept even meant.

I was perplexed, because I had clearly defined for Johnson what social mobility signified when we initially discussed about it during his leadership campaign. The phrase was a term I developed and used at the education ministry to talk about life chances. This became our departmental mantra, and its meaning is straightforward: social mobility is the approach by which we realize fair chances – not through reducing prospects away from those who already have it, but rather by extending options to those that are without.

The Core Concept

Another crucial ministry expression we used, “talent is spread evenly across our country, yet chances are not”, represented another a intentional wording, representing the dual components of a social mobility strategy. Initially, ability distributed uniformly but not nurtured uniformly through our education system. Second, access not provided uniformly by businesses or our market. Therefore, schools and companies were key to achieving improved equality of opportunity. This represented an mission about the community framework of our country – fostering human talent and connecting them to opportunities.

What Levelling Up Became

How did levelling up become under the previous government? A towns fund managed by the the relevant ministry. Hanging baskets and rearranged intersections. A white paper was launched almost thirty-six months after the leadership change, which saw ongoing initiatives relabelled under the new levelling up banner.

As a result, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went ignored, as well as all the improvement that it could have inspired – in capital, enterprise, economic policy, revenue and in local regeneration. Additionally, in education, including a tertiary education that has become a scapegoat for politicians of all stripes – although it remains the primary vehicle of social mobility for young working-class people, including myself, this country has had throughout modern times. Possibly the only engine of equal opportunity, working extensively.

The Role of Ambition

Hope is vital for our country to succeed. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a believable feeling that hard work and results are linked; that if people aspire, they can achieve. For political leadership, being able to create a sense of optimism about the future is important. Analysis by the research body 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 improving education outcomes – led to youth in those communities being up to nearly one-fifth more hopeful about their life ahead than those in comparable communities without these programmes in place. The data shows: just making an sincere effort on fair opportunity strategies can quickly and positively change how people view their destiny.

Lost Potential

Oblivious to this, and in the middle of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in September 2022, the Tory administration ended the initiatives. Why would anyone in those areas vote for a party that took that action? The opportunity areas policy is one example of what might have become a game-changing Conservative government agenda on social mobility, but that opportunity was hopelessly squandered. Strategies such as this can generate optimism and ambition. On the other hand, as the Conservatives learned, reneging on commitments of social mobility is the biggest blunder any leadership can make. The electorate punished the leadership for its failure but, primarily, for its broken promises on social mobility.

The Current Landscape

Now the baton on equal opportunity and equality of opportunity has been transferred to a new administration. The old slogan has been abandoned. The current administration 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 language – “economic renewal”. This expression to talk about new opportunities in regions like the one I come from, in South Yorkshire. It suggests that an industrial past can be reborn into an revitalized economy.

For voters, it must appear as a repetitive cycle. Similar challenge, alternative phrasing. However, so far, no progress.

What Must Change

If Labour and Reform UK want to escape the similar destiny, the respective organizations should take lessons from the Conservatives’ failure on levelling up; that fair chance language is easy to say, but successful delivery of fairer outcomes is significantly more difficult. The UK’s persistently low equal opportunity remains the key issue for our country, with young people unable to get a proper professional launch, those putting in effort in employment with few results after the living expenses are met, and citizens throughout the UK without any genuine belief their children will be able to do advance in life than they have.

Elected officials can mention improved access as much as they want. However, which party has the party that has the thorough strategy on social mobility? None appear to exist. Whoever gets there first, prevails. Not only for their organization, but, significantly, for a entire nation that has never needed equal access so urgently.