🔗 Share this article

As the struggling Conservative party convenes in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has much to ponder regarding its next steps. Doubt remains if a viable path exists at all. We are in difficult days for a political party that now has very little, if anything, new or unique to say to the electorate.

An Alternate Reality

It could have been vastly better if tangible progress had been made on an priority that is important for people across the country: Equal opportunity. Yet the former leadership hadn’t got the slightest idea on how to turn his zeitgeisty rhetoric on levelling up into policy reality. For the two years after the 2019 election, it argued over what the term actually signified.

I found it bizarre, because I had previously explained to Johnson what levelling up signified when we originally talked about it during his leadership campaign. The phrase was a term I developed and used at the Department for Education to talk about life chances. It served as our guiding principle, and its meaning is straightforward: social mobility is the means 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.

Fundamental Idea

The other key DfE phrase we used, “ability is distributed uniformly across our country, but opportunity is not”, represented another a purposeful phrase, embodying the dual components of a social mobility strategy. First, talent spread evenly but not cultivated evenly through our education system. Furthermore, access not provided uniformly by employers or our market. Therefore, education and business were crucial to achieving stronger social mobility. This represented an priority about the societal structure of our country – supporting individual capabilities and linking them with prospects.

The Reality of Implementation

How did levelling up evolve into under the previous government? Regional development money managed by the DLUHC. Street beautification and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. A white paper was published almost thirty-six months after the Prime Minister took office, which saw current strategies relabelled under the recently branded agenda.

As a result, a wider fairness strategy went undeveloped, as well as all the improvement that it could have inspired – in funding, enterprise, economic policy, revenue and in local regeneration. Moreover, in learning, including a higher education sector that has become a scapegoat for leaders across parties – even though it remains the primary vehicle of life improvement for young working-class people, personally, this country has had over the past 30 years. Possibly the primary source of social mobility, functioning widely.

The Importance of Aspiration

Aspiration is vital for our country to succeed. To foster ambition, there needs to be a believable feeling that effort and reward are connected; that if people aim high, they can succeed. For any government, being able to foster a feeling of hope about the years ahead is critical. Research by the research body at Bath University and others, recently released, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I introduced as education secretary – locally targeted strategies to boosting academic achievement – led to youth in those communities being up to nearly one-fifth more positive about their prospects than those in equivalent locations without these schemes in place. The evidence is clear: just making an genuine beginning on pro-social mobility policy can swiftly and beneficially change how people perceive their prospects.

Lost Potential

Unaware of these findings, and in the throes of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in September 2022, the ruling party closed opportunity areas down. Why would anyone in those communities vote for a political group that did that? The opportunity areas policy is one example of what might have become a revolutionary Conservative government agenda on levelling up, but that opportunity was hopelessly squandered. Strategies such as this can inspire hope and aspiration. On the other hand, as the Conservatives found out, breaking the promise of social mobility is the most expensive error any political party can make. The electorate held accountable the leadership for its ineffectiveness but, perhaps most of all, for its unfulfilled commitments on equal opportunity.

The Current Landscape

Currently the mandate on social mobility and equality of opportunity has been taken up by a Labour government. The previous terminology has been cast off. Labour has its own political rhetoric of “eliminating hurdles to advancement”. The political group that is increasingly displacing the struggling incumbents, Reform UK, also has its own message – “industrial revival”. It’s a phrase to talk about new opportunities in areas like the one I was raised in, in the region. It promises that an former economic strength can reincarnate into an revitalized economy.

To the electorate, it must feel like a Groundhog Day-style loop. Similar challenge, alternative phrasing. However, so far, no progress.

What Must Change

Should the current and alternative parties want to avoid the same fate, both these parties should understand the previous government’s errors on social mobility; that social mobility rhetoric is simple terminology, but successful delivery of improved opportunities is significantly more difficult. Britain’s persistently low social mobility remains the primary challenge for our country, with young people unable to get a decent career start, those putting in effort in full-time jobs with minimal progress after the living expenses are met, and citizens throughout the UK without any genuine belief their children will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Politicians can talk about improved access however much they like. However, which party has the political group that has the comprehensive policy agenda on social mobility? I see none. Whoever gets there first, wins. Not only for their party, but, crucially, for a complete society that has desperately requires equal access so desperately.