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While the beleaguered Tories meets in its conference city for its annual party conference, it has much to ponder regarding its future direction. 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 the electorate.

The Missed Opportunity

Things could have turned out so different if real advances had been made on an agenda that matters to people throughout the UK: Levelling up. However Boris Johnson’s government hadn’t got the slightest idea on how to transform the popular slogan on levelling up into policy reality. For the two years after the 2019 election, it argued over what the term truly represented.

I was perplexed, because I’d already told the Prime Minister what levelling up entailed when we initially discussed about it during his leadership campaign. The phrase was language I created and used at the DfE to talk about social mobility. It was our guiding principle, and its purpose is clear: levelling up is the approach by which we realize equality of opportunity – not through reducing prospects away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by expanding options to those that don’t.

The Core Concept

Another crucial ministry expression we used, “talent is spread evenly across our country, but opportunity is not”, again was a deliberate expression, representing the dual components of a equal opportunity plan. Initially, potential shared equally but not nurtured uniformly through our schools and colleges. Furthermore, chances not distributed fairly by businesses or our economic system. Therefore, education and business were crucial to achieving stronger social mobility. This was an mission about the social fabric of our country – supporting human talent and connecting them to chances.

The Reality of Implementation

What did the social mobility agenda evolve into under the previous government? Local investment schemes overseen from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Decorative floral displays and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. An official policy document was launched nearly three years after the Prime Minister took office, which saw existing policy approaches repackaged under the fresh social mobility slogan.

Consequently, a broader social mobility agenda went undeveloped, as well as all the change that it could have inspired – in investment, business, fiscal strategy, taxation and in place-making. Additionally, in learning, including a tertiary education that has become a scapegoat for elected officials – although it remains the most powerful engine of life improvement for youth from modest backgrounds, personally, this country has had throughout modern times. Possibly the sole mechanism of social mobility, operating at scale.

The Role of Ambition

Aspiration is essential for our country to prosper. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a credible sense that effort and reward are related; that if people aspire, they can attain. For all administrations, being able to foster a sense of optimism 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 – place-based approaches to enhancing learning results – led to youth in those neighborhoods being up to 18 percentage points more optimistic about their life ahead than those in equivalent locations without these programmes in place. The research confirms: just making an authentic start on equal chance initiatives can swiftly and beneficially change how people feel about their future.

Squandered Chances

Oblivious to this, and in the midst of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in that period, the ruling party ended the initiatives. Why should any person in those regions vote for a party that took that action? This specific initiative is a clear case of what might have become a revolutionary Conservative government agenda on levelling up, but that possibility was completely wasted. Methods such as this can inspire hope and aspiration. Conversely, as the ruling party discovered, reneging on commitments of fair chances is the biggest blunder any government can make. The electorate penalized the leadership for its failure but, above all, for its unfulfilled commitments on equal opportunity.

Present Circumstances

Currently the baton on equal opportunity and fair access has passed to a new administration. The old slogan has been discarded. The new government has its own policy language of “removing obstacles to success”. The organization that is steadily supplanting the hapless incumbents, the alternative party, also has its own terminology – “industrial revival”. This expression to talk about fresh prospects in communities like the one I was raised in, in my hometown. It suggests that an historical manufacturing base can reincarnate into an industrial future.

For voters, it must appear as a repetitive cycle. Identical problem, alternative phrasing. But – as yet – no results.

Lessons for the Future

If Labour and Reform UK want to avoid the same fate, the respective organizations should learn from the previous government’s errors on levelling up; that fair chance language is simple terminology, but actual achievement of more equal results is significantly more difficult. Our nation’s chronically poor life chances remains the central problem for our country, with young people unable to get a decent career start, those laboring in full-time jobs with few results after the housing costs are covered, and people across the country without any genuine belief their next generation will be able to do improve in life than they have.

Elected officials can discuss fairer opportunities repeatedly. But where is the political group that has the complete plan on equal opportunity? I observe no such party. The first to achieve this, wins. Not just for their party, but, more importantly, for a entire nation that has never needed equal access so desperately.