🔗 Share this article

As the existentially challenged Conservative party convenes in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has much to ponder regarding its future direction. Doubt remains if a viable path remains open. These are difficult days for a governing group that now has almost nothing, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the electorate.

What Could Have Been

The situation might have been vastly better if real advances had been made on an agenda that resonates with people throughout the UK: Social mobility. However the previous administration lacked the first clue on how to convert the popular slogan on social mobility into concrete action. Over twenty-four months after the general election, it debated what the term actually signified.

I found it bizarre, because I’d already told Johnson what social mobility signified when we originally talked about it during his leadership campaign. The phrase was a term I developed and used at the education ministry to talk about life chances. It was our guiding principle, and its definition is clear: levelling up is the method by which we realize equal access – not by taking prospects away from those who already have it, but rather by expanding options to those that lack them.

Fundamental Idea

An additional vital education department term we used, “talent is spread evenly around the UK, yet chances are not”, served as a intentional wording, reflecting the two halves of a social mobility strategy. To begin with, potential shared equally but not cultivated evenly through our schools and colleges. Second, opportunities not spread evenly by the private sector or our market. Therefore, learning and employment were key to achieving better life chances. This represented an priority about the social fabric of our country – fostering people’s potential and connecting them to chances.

The Actual Outcome

How did the social mobility agenda become under the Tory administration? A towns fund administered out of the DLUHC. Hanging baskets and redeveloped traffic systems. A white paper was published nearly three years after the leadership change, which saw ongoing initiatives repackaged under the recently branded agenda.

As a result, a broader social mobility agenda went unpursued, as well as all the reform that it might have driven – in investment, commerce, economic policy, tax and in local regeneration. Additionally, in learning, including a higher education sector that has become a punchbag for politicians of all stripes – despite the fact that it remains the primary vehicle of social mobility for youth from modest backgrounds, like me, this country has had throughout modern times. Perhaps the primary source of social mobility, operating at scale.

The Role of Ambition

Hope is crucial for our country to succeed. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a credible sense that effort and reward are linked; that if people aspire, they can achieve. For political leadership, being able to instil a outlook of positivity about the future is important. Research by the research body at the academic establishment and others, recently released, showed that the DfE’s 12 “opportunity areas” I launched while in office – community-focused methods to improving education outcomes – led to students in those communities being up to nearly one-fifth more positive about their life ahead than those in equivalent locations without these initiatives in place. The research confirms: just making an genuine beginning on fair opportunity strategies can quickly and positively change how people feel about their destiny.

Lost Potential

Ignoring this evidence, and in the middle of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in that period, the Conservative government ended the initiatives. Why should any person in those areas vote for a organization that did that? The targeted programme is a clear case of what had the potential to be a game-changing administration strategy on social mobility, but that chance was completely wasted. Approaches such as this can generate optimism and ambition. In contrast, as the Tories discovered, breaking the promise of equal opportunity is the biggest blunder any government can make. Voters penalized the administration for its incompetence but, primarily, for its unfulfilled commitments on equal opportunity.

The Current Landscape

Currently the mandate on equal opportunity and equal chances has been taken up by a opposition party. The previous terminology has been cast off. The new government has its own public messaging of “removing obstacles to success”. The party that is gradually replacing the struggling Conservative party, the challenger, also has its own message – “industrial revival”. It’s a phrase to talk about fresh prospects in areas like the one I was raised in, in South Yorkshire. It promises that an former economic strength can reincarnate into an revitalized economy.

For voters, it must seem like a déjà vu experience. Identical problem, different language. Yet, currently, little improvement.

Lessons for the Future

Should the current and alternative parties want to avoid the similar destiny, both these parties should understand the Conservatives’ failure on levelling up; that fair chance language is simple terminology, but actual achievement of more equal results is much harder. The UK’s chronically poor equal opportunity remains the primary challenge for our country, with youth unable to get a decent career start, 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 offspring will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Leaders can mention equal chances repeatedly. However, which party has the party that has the comprehensive policy agenda on life chances? I observe no such party. The first to achieve this, succeeds. Not only for their party, but, significantly, for a whole country that has urgently needs fair chances so urgently.