🔗 Share this article

As the existentially challenged Tories meets in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its next steps. It’s not even clear if a clear direction remains open. These are challenging circumstances for a governing group that now has very little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to voters.

What Could Have Been

It could have been markedly improved if concrete steps had been made on an priority that is important for people across the country: Equal opportunity. But Boris Johnson’s government hadn’t got the basic understanding on how to convert the trendy talk on levelling up into concrete action. For the two years after the general election, it discussed what the term truly represented.

I was perplexed, because I had clearly defined for the Prime Minister what levelling up entailed when we initially discussed about it during the contest for party leader. This terminology was a term I developed and used at the DfE to talk about life chances. It was our departmental mantra, and its purpose is straightforward: levelling up is the means by which we attain equal access – not by taking prospects away from those who already have it, but rather by expanding opportunities to those that lack them.

Essential Principle

An additional vital education department term we used, “talent is spread evenly across our country, but opportunity is not”, served as a intentional wording, embodying the dual components of a equal opportunity plan. First, ability distributed uniformly but not cultivated evenly through our learning institutions. Additionally, access not provided uniformly by the private sector or our economy. As a result, learning and employment were essential to achieving stronger social mobility. This represented an mission about the societal structure of our country – fostering human talent and linking them with chances.

The Reality of Implementation

What did the social mobility agenda become under the Tory administration? Local investment schemes overseen from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Hanging baskets and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. A government strategy was released nearly three years after Johnson became leader, which saw current strategies 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 may have generated – in investment, business, financial planning, tax and in place-making. Moreover, in education, including a university system that has become a target for politicians of all stripes – even though it remains the primary vehicle of social mobility for young working-class people, personally, this country has had over the past 30 years. Maybe the primary source of fair chances, operating at scale.

The Role of Ambition

Ambition is vital for our country to thrive. To foster ambition, there needs to be a credible sense that hard work and results are related; that if people aspire, they can achieve. For all administrations, being able to create a feeling of hope about the years ahead is important. Research by the academic institution at Bath University and others, published last month, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I introduced as education secretary – community-focused methods to boosting academic achievement – led to young people in those neighborhoods being up to 18 percentage points more hopeful about their prospects than those in equivalent locations without these initiatives in place. The evidence is clear: just making an sincere effort on fair opportunity strategies can rapidly and effectively change how people perceive their prospects.

Lost Potential

Ignoring this evidence, and in the middle of its new leader election, in September 2022, the ruling party ended the initiatives. Why would anyone in those communities vote for a party that made that decision? This specific initiative is a single instance of what might have become a transformative Conservative government agenda on levelling up, but that opportunity was totally misused. Methods such as this can inspire hope and aspiration. In contrast, as the ruling party discovered, breaking the promise of fair chances is the costliest mistake any government can make. The electorate held accountable the administration for its failure but, above all, for its unfulfilled commitments on social mobility.

Present Circumstances

Currently the mandate on life chances and fair access has been transferred to a new administration. The previous terminology has been discarded. Labour has its own political rhetoric of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The party that is gradually replacing the hapless Conservative party, the challenger, also has its own language – “economic renewal”. The terminology to talk about new opportunities in regions like the one I grew up in, in my hometown. It promises that an former economic strength can revive into an modern manufacturing sector.

For voters, it must appear as a repetitive cycle. Same issue, new terminology. But – as yet – no results.

What Must Change

If Labour and Reform UK want to avoid the identical outcome, both these parties should take lessons from the Tories’ mistakes on social mobility; that fair chance language is easy to say, but actual achievement of more equal results is significantly more difficult. Britain’s persistently low equal opportunity remains the central problem for our country, with youth unable to get a good job beginning, those putting in effort in full-time jobs with minimal progress after the living expenses are met, and individuals nationwide without any real hope their offspring will be able to do advance in life than they have.

Leaders can discuss fairer opportunities repeatedly. Yet where is the political group that has the comprehensive policy agenda on life chances? None appear to exist. The first to achieve this, prevails. Not only for their organization, but, more importantly, for a entire nation that has desperately requires equality of opportunity so urgently.