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While the existentially challenged Tories meets in its conference city for its annual party conference, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its path forward. There is uncertainty if a viable path is available. We are in difficult days for a political party that now has almost nothing, if anything, new or unique to say to voters.

An Alternate Reality

Things could have turned out markedly improved if concrete steps had been made on an policy focus that matters to people across the country: Social mobility. However Boris Johnson’s government lacked the slightest idea on how to turn his zeitgeisty rhetoric on levelling up into concrete action. During the initial period after the 2019 election, it debated what the term truly represented.

I found it bizarre, because I had clearly defined for Johnson what social mobility meant when we originally talked about it during his leadership campaign. The expression was language I created and used at the DfE to talk about life chances. It was our core mission, and its purpose is clear: social mobility is the approach by which we attain fair chances – not through reducing chances away from those who possess it, but rather by extending opportunities to those that lack them.

Essential Principle

An additional vital education department term we used, “ability is distributed uniformly across our country, yet chances are not”, served as a purposeful phrase, embodying the two parts of a equal opportunity plan. First, potential shared equally but not cultivated evenly through our learning institutions. Additionally, opportunities not spread evenly by businesses or our economic system. Therefore, learning and employment were crucial to achieving better life chances. This constituted an mission about the societal structure of our country – fostering people’s potential and providing access to chances.

The Reality of Implementation

How did the social mobility agenda become under Johnson’s Conservatives? Local investment schemes overseen from the the relevant ministry. Hanging baskets and rearranged intersections. An official policy document was released a significant period after Johnson became leader, which saw current strategies relabelled under the new levelling up banner.

Consequently, a wider fairness strategy went undeveloped, as well as all the change that it might have driven – in funding, business, economic policy, taxation and in local regeneration. And, of course, in schooling, including a tertiary education that has become a target for elected officials – despite the fact that it remains the primary vehicle of upward movement for young working-class people, including myself, this country has had in recent decades. Possibly the sole mechanism of equal opportunity, functioning widely.

The Importance of Aspiration

Aspiration is essential for our country to prosper. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a realistic expectation that effort and reward are connected; that if people aim high, they can succeed. For all administrations, being able to create a feeling of hope about the years ahead is critical. Studies by the Institute for Policy Research at Bath University and others, recently released, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I introduced as education secretary – community-focused methods to boosting academic achievement – led to youth in those neighborhoods being up to a significant margin more positive about their future than those in comparable communities without these programmes in place. The data shows: just making an genuine beginning on equal chance initiatives can quickly and positively change how people perceive their destiny.

Squandered Chances

Oblivious to this, and in the middle of its successor selection process, in autumn 2022, the Conservative government terminated the programmes. What reason would someone in those regions vote for a political group that made that decision? The opportunity areas policy is a single instance of what had the potential to be a game-changing Tory policy platform on levelling up, but that opportunity was hopelessly squandered. Methods such as this can generate optimism and ambition. Conversely, as the Conservatives found out, reneging on commitments of equal opportunity is the biggest blunder any political party can make. Voters penalized the administration for its failure but, above all, for its broken promises on equal opportunity.

The Current Landscape

Currently the responsibility on social mobility and fair access has passed to a Labour government. The old slogan has been cast off. The new government has its own political rhetoric of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The party that is increasingly displacing the failing Conservative party, Reform UK, also has its own message – “reindustrialisation”. This expression to talk about new opportunities in regions like the one I grew up in, in the region. It suggests that an historical manufacturing base can revive into an modern manufacturing sector.

For voters, it must seem like a Groundhog Day-style loop. Similar challenge, new terminology. However, so far, no progress.

Lessons for the Future

If Labour and Reform UK want to prevent the identical outcome, each group should understand the Conservatives’ failure on social mobility; that equal opportunity talk is simple terminology, but successful delivery of fairer outcomes is far more challenging. Our nation’s endemically weak social mobility remains the key issue for our country, with the next generation unable to get a decent career start, those working hard in full-time jobs with few results after the housing costs are covered, and individuals nationwide without any real hope their offspring will be able to do advance in life than they have.

Politicians can talk about improved access however much they like. However, which party has the party that has the comprehensive policy agenda on equal opportunity? I observe no such party. The first to achieve this, succeeds. Not just for their party, but, significantly, for a complete society that has never needed equality of opportunity so desperately.