🔗 Share this article

While the existentially challenged Tories meets in its conference city for its yearly gathering, it has much to ponder regarding its next steps. Doubt remains if a road forward is available. These are tough times for a political party that now has very little, if anything, new or unique to say to voters.

The Missed Opportunity

The situation might have been so different if real advances had been made on an agenda that resonates with people throughout the UK: Equal opportunity. Yet Boris Johnson’s government lacked the slightest idea on how to transform his zeitgeisty rhetoric on levelling up into policy reality. During the initial period after the 2019 election, it argued over what the term even meant.

I was perplexed, because I’d already told the Prime Minister what social mobility entailed when we first spoke about it during his leadership campaign. The expression was a term I developed and used at the education ministry to talk about social mobility. It served as our guiding principle, and its meaning is unambiguous: social mobility is the method by which we achieve equality of opportunity – not by taking prospects away from those who possess it, but rather by extending opportunities to those that don’t.

Fundamental Idea

The other key ministry expression we used, “talent is spread evenly around the UK, however access isn’t”, represented another a purposeful phrase, representing the two halves of a social mobility strategy. To begin with, talent spread evenly but not cultivated evenly through our schools and colleges. Furthermore, opportunities not spread evenly by businesses or our economy. As a result, education and business were essential to achieving stronger social mobility. This represented an priority about the societal structure of our country – supporting people’s potential and providing access to opportunities.

What Levelling Up Became

How did the social mobility agenda evolve into under the Tory administration? Local investment schemes administered out of the DLUHC. Street beautification and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. An official policy document was published a significant period after Johnson became leader, which saw current strategies relabelled under the recently branded agenda.

As a result, a broader social mobility agenda went ignored, as well as all the change that it could have inspired – in capital, business, economic policy, revenue and in community development. Additionally, in schooling, including a higher education sector that has become a punchbag for elected officials – although it remains the primary vehicle of life improvement for individuals from less privileged homes, like me, this country has had in recent decades. Possibly the only engine of social mobility, operating at scale.

The Importance of Aspiration

Aspiration is crucial for our country to thrive. 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 attain. For any government, being able to foster a outlook of positivity about the years ahead is important. Research by the academic institution at the university and others, published last month, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I launched while in office – community-focused methods to improving education outcomes – led to young people in those areas being up to 18 percentage points more hopeful about their life ahead than those in comparable communities without these programmes in place. The research confirms: just making an authentic start on equal chance initiatives can quickly and positively change how people perceive their future.

Missed Opportunities

Unaware of these findings, and in the midst of its new leader election, in autumn 2022, the Tory administration ended the initiatives. Why should any person in those areas vote for a organization that took that action? The opportunity areas policy is a single instance of what might have become a transformative Conservative government agenda on social mobility, but that possibility was hopelessly squandered. Approaches such as this can inspire hope and aspiration. Conversely, as the Tories discovered, failing to deliver of equal opportunity is the biggest blunder any political party can make. Voters punished the administration for its incompetence but, primarily, for its failed pledges on equal opportunity.

The Current Landscape

Now the baton on social mobility and fair access has passed to a Labour government. The previous terminology has been abandoned. Labour has its own public messaging of “removing obstacles to success”. The party that is steadily supplanting the failing Tories, Reform UK, also has its own terminology – “industrial revival”. The terminology to talk about new opportunities in communities like the one I come from, in the region. It suggests that an industrial past can revive into an industrial future.

For the public, it must seem like a repetitive cycle. Identical problem, different language. But – as yet – no results.

The Way Forward

Whether the government and opposition want to escape the same fate, each group should learn from the Tories’ mistakes on social mobility; that social mobility rhetoric is easy to say, but effective implementation of improved opportunities is far more challenging. Britain’s chronically poor equal opportunity remains the key issue for our country, with young people unable to get a proper professional launch, those putting in effort in occupations with little to show after the housing costs are covered, and individuals nationwide without any real hope their children will be able to do advance in life than they have.

Leaders can mention fairer opportunities as much as they want. However, which party has the political group that has the comprehensive policy agenda on social mobility? None appear to exist. Whoever gets there first, succeeds. Not just for their party, but, significantly, for a whole country that has urgently needs fair chances so desperately.