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While the beleaguered Tories gathers in its conference city for its yearly gathering, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its next steps. Doubt remains if a road forward exists at all. We are in challenging circumstances for a political party that now has almost nothing, if anything, new or unique to say to voters.

An Alternate Reality

It could have been markedly improved if concrete steps had been made on an agenda that is important for people across the country: Social mobility. But the previous administration did not possess the first clue on how to turn his zeitgeisty rhetoric on levelling up into policy reality. Over twenty-four months after the general election, it debated what the phrase even meant.

I was perplexed, because I had previously explained to the Prime Minister what levelling up entailed when we first spoke about it during his leadership campaign. This terminology was a term I developed and used at the DfE to talk about social mobility. This became our core mission, and its purpose is clear: levelling up is the approach by which we achieve fair chances – not through reducing chances away from those who possess it, but rather by extending options to those that lack them.

The Core Concept

An additional vital ministry expression we used, “potential is equally shared across our country, but opportunity is not”, served as a intentional wording, representing the dual components of a fairness agenda. Initially, ability distributed uniformly but not nurtured uniformly through our learning institutions. Furthermore, opportunities not spread evenly by the private sector or our economic system. Therefore, schools and companies were crucial to achieving stronger social mobility. This constituted an priority about the societal structure of our country – investing in human talent and providing access to opportunities.

What Levelling Up Became

How did levelling up turn into under the previous government? A towns fund administered out of the DLUHC. Street beautification and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. An official policy document was launched a significant period after the leadership change, which saw existing policy approaches relabelled 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 funding, commerce, fiscal strategy, revenue and in community development. And, of course, in schooling, including a higher education sector that has become a target for elected officials – despite the fact that it remains the most powerful engine of upward movement for youth from modest backgrounds, personally, this country has had throughout modern times. Perhaps the sole mechanism of social mobility, functioning widely.

Why Hope Matters

Aspiration is crucial for our country to prosper. For hope to exist, there needs to be a credible sense that hard work and results are linked; that if people aim high, they can succeed. For political leadership, being able to instil a outlook of positivity about the years ahead is important. Studies by the Institute for Policy Research at the academic establishment and others, published last month, showed that the ministry’s focus zones I launched while in office – locally targeted strategies to improving education outcomes – led to youth in those areas being up to 18 percentage points more hopeful about their life ahead than those in equivalent locations without these schemes in place. The data shows: just making an sincere effort on pro-social mobility policy can rapidly and effectively change how people perceive their prospects.

Lost Potential

Oblivious to this, and in the middle of its successor selection process, in that period, the Conservative government terminated the programmes. Why would anyone in those areas vote for a political group that took that action? The opportunity areas policy is a clear case of what could have been a transformative Tory policy platform on social mobility, but that possibility was completely wasted. Approaches such as this can generate optimism and ambition. On the other hand, as the Tories learned, breaking the promise of fair chances is the costliest mistake any political party can make. The public held accountable the leadership for its ineffectiveness but, above all, for its unfulfilled commitments on equal opportunity.

The Current Landscape

Currently the baton on life chances and equal chances has passed to a new administration. The previous terminology has been discarded. The current administration has its own public messaging of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The organization that is steadily supplanting the failing Tories, the alternative party, also has its own message – “reindustrialisation”. This expression to talk about fresh prospects in regions like the one I come from, in the region. It promises that an industrial past can revive into an modern manufacturing sector.

To the electorate, it must feel like a Groundhog Day-style loop. Same issue, new terminology. But – as yet – no results.

Lessons for the Future

Should the current and alternative parties want to avoid the identical outcome, each group should take lessons from the Conservatives’ failure on social mobility; that equal opportunity talk is easy to say, but actual achievement of more equal results is significantly more difficult. Britain’s endemically weak equal opportunity remains the central problem for our country, with youth unable to get a good job beginning, those working hard in employment with minimal progress after the housing costs are covered, and individuals nationwide without any real hope their children will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Elected officials can talk about equal chances repeatedly. Yet where is the party that has the comprehensive policy agenda on life chances? None appear to exist. The first to achieve this, wins. Not just for their party, but, more importantly, for a entire nation that has never needed equal access so badly.