As the original author preached social mobility as the key to Tory electoral victory – but the former Prime Minister failed to deliver. Now look at us.

As the struggling Tories convenes in Manchester for its annual party conference, it has much to ponder regarding its path forward. It’s not even clear if a viable path remains open. We are in tough times for a governing group that now has little, if anything, new or unique to say to voters.

An Alternate Reality

The situation might have been markedly improved if concrete steps had been made on an agenda that is important for people across the country: Equal opportunity. However the previous administration did not possess the first clue on how to convert his zeitgeisty rhetoric on levelling up into actual implementation. Over twenty-four months after the 2019 election, it argued over what the term even meant.

I found it bizarre, because I had previously explained to Johnson what social mobility meant when we initially discussed about it during his leadership campaign. The expression was a term I developed and used at the Department for Education to talk about equal opportunity. This became our core mission, and its meaning is clear: levelling up is the means by which we achieve equal access – not through reducing chances away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by extending chances to those that lack them.

The Core Concept

An additional vital DfE phrase we used, “ability is distributed uniformly across our country, yet chances are not”, represented another a intentional wording, reflecting the dual components of a fairness agenda. To begin with, talent spread evenly but not cultivated evenly through our schools and colleges. Second, opportunities not spread evenly by businesses or our economy. As a result, education and business were key to achieving better life chances. This represented an mission about the community framework of our country – fostering people’s potential and linking them with opportunities.

The Actual Outcome

What did levelling up become under the Tory administration? A towns fund administered out of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Decorative floral displays and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. A government strategy was published almost thirty-six months after Johnson became leader, which saw current strategies repackaged under the fresh social mobility slogan.

Consequently, a broader social mobility agenda went unpursued, as well as all the change that it might have driven – in funding, enterprise, economic policy, taxation and in local regeneration. Additionally, in education, including a higher education sector that has become a punchbag for leaders across parties – although it remains the strongest driver of life improvement for young working-class people, including myself, this country has had in recent decades. Possibly the sole mechanism of social mobility, working extensively.

The Role of Ambition

Hope is vital for our country to prosper. To foster ambition, there needs to be a realistic expectation that effort and reward are linked; that if people dream big, they can succeed. For any government, being able to foster a sense of optimism about the future is crucial. Analysis by the academic institution at Bath University and others, published last month, showed that the DfE’s 12 “opportunity areas” I established during my tenure – place-based approaches to boosting academic achievement – led to youth in those communities being up to 18 percentage points more optimistic about their future than those in equivalent locations without these initiatives in place. The research confirms: just making an sincere effort on equal chance initiatives can swiftly and beneficially change how people feel about their destiny.

Squandered Chances

Oblivious to this, and in the midst of its new leader election, in September 2022, the Conservative government closed opportunity areas down. What reason would someone in those regions vote for a political group that made that decision? The targeted programme is one example of what might have become a transformative Tory policy platform on social mobility, but that opportunity was hopelessly squandered. Methods such as this can inspire hope and aspiration. Conversely, as the Tories learned, breaking the promise of social mobility is the most expensive error any leadership can make. The public held accountable the administration for its incompetence but, above all, for its failed pledges on social mobility.

Today’s Political Reality

Now the baton on equal opportunity and fair access has been taken up by a Labour government. The levelling up rhetoric has been discarded. The new government has its own public messaging of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The party that is increasingly displacing the hapless Tories, Reform UK, also has its own message – “economic renewal”. This expression to talk about additional chances in regions like the one I grew up in, in my hometown. It suggests that an industrial past can be reborn into an revitalized economy.

For the public, it must appear as a repetitive cycle. Identical problem, new terminology. But – as yet – no results.

The Way Forward

Should the current and alternative parties want to prevent the identical outcome, both these parties should understand the Conservatives’ failure on social mobility; that fair chance language is one thing, but actual achievement of more equal results is much harder. Britain’s chronically poor life chances remains the key issue for our country, with the next generation unable to get a decent career start, those putting in effort in employment with minimal progress after the living expenses are met, and individuals nationwide without any actual expectation their children will be able to do advance in life than they have.

Elected officials can mention improved access however much they like. But where is the party that has the complete plan on life chances? I observe no such party. The first to achieve this, wins. Not only for their party, but, more importantly, for a whole country that has never needed fair chances so desperately.