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While the struggling Conservative party 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 challenging circumstances for a political party that now has little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to voters.

What Could Have Been

It could have been vastly better if real advances had been made on an policy focus that is important for people throughout the UK: Levelling up. However the previous administration lacked the slightest idea on how to transform the trendy talk on levelling up into actual implementation. During the initial period after the 2019 election, it argued over what the concept actually signified.

I was perplexed, because I’d already told Johnson what levelling up entailed when we originally talked about it during his leadership campaign. This terminology was language I created and used at the DfE to talk about equal opportunity. This became our departmental mantra, and its meaning is clear: social mobility is the approach by which we realize equality of opportunity – not through reducing prospects away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by providing chances to those that are without.

Essential Principle

The other key DfE phrase we used, “potential is equally shared across our country, but opportunity is not”, served as a purposeful phrase, embodying the two parts of a social mobility strategy. First, ability distributed uniformly but not nurtured uniformly through our education system. Additionally, access not provided uniformly by employers or our economy. As a result, learning and employment were crucial to achieving improved equality of opportunity. This constituted an priority about the community framework of our country – fostering individual capabilities and connecting them to opportunities.

The Actual Outcome

What did levelling up become under the previous government? A towns fund overseen from the the relevant ministry. Street beautification and redeveloped traffic systems. A government strategy was published a significant period after Johnson became leader, which saw existing policy approaches rebadged under the new levelling up banner.

Therefore, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went unpursued, as well as all the change that it may have generated – in capital, enterprise, financial planning, taxation and in community development. And, of course, in learning, including a higher education sector that has become a scapegoat for politicians of all stripes – even though it remains the most powerful engine of social mobility for youth from modest backgrounds, personally, this country has had over the past 30 years. Perhaps the sole mechanism of fair chances, operating at scale.

The Importance of Aspiration

Ambition is essential for our country to prosper. For hope to exist, there needs to be a believable feeling that hard work and results are related; that if people aspire, they can attain. For all administrations, being able to instil a feeling of hope about the years ahead is critical. Research by the Institute for Policy Research at the university and others, published last month, showed that the DfE’s 12 “opportunity areas” I launched while in office – locally targeted strategies to enhancing learning results – led to young people in those communities being up to 18 percentage points more positive about their future than those in similar areas without these initiatives in place. The research confirms: just making an sincere effort on fair opportunity strategies can quickly and positively change how people view their destiny.

Lost Potential

Ignoring this evidence, and in the throes of its successor selection process, in autumn 2022, the Tory administration ended the initiatives. Why should any person in those regions vote for a party that did that? The targeted programme is one example of what could have been a revolutionary Conservative government agenda on social mobility, but that chance was completely wasted. Strategies such as this can create belief and drive. In contrast, as the ruling party found out, reneging on commitments of fair chances is the biggest blunder any leadership can make. Voters punished the leadership for its failure but, primarily, for its broken promises on social mobility.

The Current Landscape

At present the baton on life chances and equality of opportunity has been taken up by a Labour government. The old slogan has been abandoned. The new government has its own political rhetoric of “eliminating hurdles to advancement”. The organization that is steadily supplanting the failing incumbents, Reform UK, also has its own message – “industrial revival”. This expression to talk about additional chances in regions like the one I grew up in, in South Yorkshire. It suggests that an industrial past can reincarnate into an industrial future.

For voters, it must feel like a Groundhog Day-style loop. Similar challenge, new terminology. But – as yet – no results.

What Must Change

Should the current and alternative parties want to avoid the similar destiny, the respective organizations should understand the previous government’s errors on levelling up; that fair chance language is simple terminology, but successful delivery of fairer outcomes is significantly more difficult. Britain’s chronically poor equal opportunity remains the primary challenge for our country, with the next generation unable to get a decent career start, those putting in effort in full-time jobs with few results after the housing costs are covered, and people across the country without any real hope their offspring will be able to do improve in life than they have.

Elected officials can discuss fairer opportunities repeatedly. However, which party has the party that has the comprehensive policy agenda on social mobility? I observe no such party. Whoever gets there first, wins. Not just for their party, but, crucially, for a whole country that has desperately requires equal access so desperately.