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While the beleaguered Tories convenes in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has plenty to consider regarding its next steps. It’s not even clear if a clear direction is available. These are tough times for a political party that now has little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to voters.

The Missed Opportunity

It could have been vastly better if real advances had been made on an policy focus that matters to people across the country: Levelling up. But Boris Johnson’s government hadn’t got the basic understanding on how to turn the popular slogan on levelling up into concrete action. Over twenty-four months after the 2019 election, it debated what the phrase actually signified.

It seemed strange to me, because I’d already told the Prime Minister what levelling up signified when we initially discussed about it during the contest for party leader. This terminology was a concept I originated and used at the Department for Education to talk about equal opportunity. It served as our core mission, and its meaning is clear: social mobility is the approach by which we achieve equality of opportunity – not through reducing chances away from those who possess it, but rather by providing options to those that are without.

Essential Principle

An additional vital education department term we used, “ability is distributed uniformly throughout the nation, yet chances are not”, represented another a deliberate expression, reflecting the dual components of a fairness agenda. First, potential shared equally but not cultivated evenly through our learning institutions. Furthermore, opportunities not spread evenly by employers or our market. Thus, schools and companies were key to achieving stronger social mobility. This represented an mission about the social fabric of our country – supporting people’s potential and connecting them to prospects.

The Reality of Implementation

What did the social mobility agenda turn into under the previous government? Regional development money overseen from the the relevant ministry. Hanging baskets and rearranged intersections. A white paper was published nearly three years after the leadership change, which saw current strategies relabelled under the fresh social mobility slogan.

As a result, a broader social mobility agenda went undeveloped, as well as all the change that it might have driven – in funding, enterprise, fiscal strategy, revenue and in local regeneration. Moreover, in education, including a university system that has become a scapegoat for politicians of all stripes – despite the fact that it remains the strongest driver of upward movement for young working-class people, personally, this country has had in recent decades. Possibly the primary source of equal opportunity, working extensively.

The Importance of Aspiration

Hope is vital for our country to succeed. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a realistic expectation that effort and reward are connected; that if people dream big, they can succeed. For any government, being able to foster a feeling of hope about the years ahead is crucial. Analysis by the research body at the academic establishment and others, newly available, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I launched while in office – locally targeted strategies to boosting academic achievement – led to students in those areas being up to nearly one-fifth more positive about their prospects than those in comparable communities without these schemes in place. The research confirms: just making an authentic start on pro-social mobility policy can rapidly and effectively change how people perceive their future.

Missed Opportunities

Unaware of these findings, and in the middle of its successor selection process, in autumn 2022, the Conservative government 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 had the potential to be a revolutionary Conservative government agenda on social mobility, but that possibility was hopelessly squandered. Methods such as this can create belief and drive. Conversely, as the Conservatives learned, breaking the promise of social mobility is the costliest mistake any government can make. The public penalized the leadership for its failure but, perhaps most of all, for its unfulfilled commitments on levelling up.

Today’s Political Reality

At present the baton on social mobility and equal chances has passed to a opposition party. The levelling up rhetoric has been cast off. The new government has its own policy language of “removing obstacles to success”. The party that is increasingly displacing the failing Conservative party, the alternative party, also has its own language – “economic renewal”. This expression to talk about new opportunities in communities like the one I was raised in, in the region. It promises that an historical manufacturing base can reincarnate into an modern manufacturing sector.

To the electorate, it must feel like a repetitive cycle. Identical problem, new terminology. But – as yet – no results.

Lessons for the Future

Should the current and alternative parties want to prevent the same fate, the respective organizations should take lessons from the Tories’ mistakes on social mobility; that fair chance language is easy to say, but effective implementation of fairer outcomes is much harder. Britain’s endemically weak social mobility remains the key issue for our country, with the next generation unable to get a proper professional launch, those putting in effort in occupations with minimal progress after the housing costs are covered, and citizens throughout the UK without any actual expectation their next generation will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Elected officials can talk about improved access repeatedly. Yet where is the political group that has the complete plan on social mobility? None appear to exist. The first to achieve this, succeeds. Not only for their party, but, more importantly, for a entire nation that has desperately requires fair chances so badly.