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While the struggling Tories meets in its conference city for its yearly gathering, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its path forward. Doubt remains if a road forward is available. These are difficult days for a political party that now has almost nothing, if anything, new or unique to say to the public.

The Missed Opportunity

It could have been markedly improved if tangible progress had been made on an agenda that is important for people across the country: Social mobility. However the former leadership hadn’t got the basic understanding on how to turn the popular slogan on social mobility into concrete action. Over twenty-four months after the general election, it debated what the phrase actually signified.

It seemed strange to me, because I had clearly defined for the Prime Minister what social mobility signified when we originally talked about it during his leadership campaign. This terminology was language I created and used at the Department for Education to talk about social mobility. It served as our guiding principle, and its definition is unambiguous: levelling up is the method by which we attain equal access – without removing prospects away from those who already have it, but rather by extending opportunities to those that are without.

Essential Principle

Another crucial ministry expression we used, “talent is spread evenly across our country, however access isn’t”, served as a purposeful phrase, embodying the two halves of a social mobility strategy. First, potential shared equally but not nurtured uniformly through our education system. Furthermore, chances not distributed fairly by the private sector or our economy. Thus, education and business were essential to achieving improved equality of opportunity. This constituted an mission about the social fabric of our country – supporting individual capabilities and linking them with chances.

The Reality of Implementation

What did the social mobility agenda become under the previous government? Local investment schemes managed by the DLUHC. Street beautification and rearranged intersections. A government strategy was launched almost thirty-six months after the Prime Minister took office, which saw existing policy approaches repackaged under the fresh social mobility slogan.

As a result, a wider fairness strategy went unpursued, as well as all the reform that it might have driven – in investment, enterprise, economic policy, revenue and in place-making. Moreover, in learning, including a tertiary education that has become a punchbag for elected officials – although it remains the strongest driver of life improvement for individuals from less privileged homes, personally, this country has had over the past 30 years. Perhaps the sole mechanism of social mobility, working extensively.

Why Hope Matters

Aspiration is vital for our country to succeed. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a believable feeling that hard work and results are related; that if people aim high, they can achieve. For all administrations, being able to foster a outlook of positivity about the years ahead is important. Studies by the Institute for Policy Research at Bath University and others, published last month, showed that the ministry’s focus zones I established during my tenure – community-focused methods to improving education outcomes – led to youth in those areas being up to a significant margin more optimistic about their prospects than those in comparable communities without these programmes in place. The evidence is clear: just making an genuine beginning on equal chance initiatives can swiftly and beneficially change how people view their future.

Missed Opportunities

Unaware of these findings, and in the throes of its successor selection process, in September 2022, the Tory administration closed opportunity areas down. Why should any person in those areas vote for a political group that made that decision? This specific initiative is a clear case of what had the potential to be a game-changing administration strategy on levelling up, but that opportunity was completely wasted. Strategies such as this can create belief and drive. Conversely, as the Tories learned, reneging on commitments of fair chances is the most expensive error any government can make. The electorate punished the leadership for its incompetence but, above all, for its failed pledges on levelling up.

Today’s Political Reality

At present the mandate on life chances and equal chances has been transferred to a Labour government. The previous terminology has been cast off. The current administration has its own public messaging of “removing obstacles to success”. The organization that is steadily supplanting the failing Conservative party, the alternative party, also has its own terminology – “economic renewal”. It’s a phrase to talk about additional chances in areas like the one I was raised in, in South Yorkshire. It suggests that an industrial past can reincarnate into an industrial future.

For voters, it must appear as a déjà vu experience. Same issue, different language. However, so far, no progress.

What Must Change

Should the current and alternative parties want to escape the identical outcome, both these parties should understand the Conservatives’ failure on levelling up; that equal opportunity talk is simple terminology, but successful delivery of more equal results is significantly more difficult. Our nation’s persistently low equal opportunity remains the key issue for our country, with youth unable to get a decent career start, those working hard in employment with minimal progress after the rent has been paid, and individuals nationwide without any genuine belief their children will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Elected officials can talk about improved access as much as they want. But where is the party that has the complete plan on social mobility? I see none. Whoever gets there first, succeeds. Not only for their organization, but, significantly, for a whole country that has urgently needs equal access so badly.