🔗 Share this article

As the beleaguered Tories convenes in its conference city for its yearly gathering, it has much to ponder regarding its path forward. There is uncertainty if a viable path is available. We are in difficult days for a governing group that now has almost nothing, if anything, new or unique to say to the public.

The Missed Opportunity

Things could have turned out vastly better if tangible progress had been made on an priority that matters to people across the country: Equal opportunity. Yet the former leadership did not possess the basic understanding on how to convert the popular slogan on levelling up into actual implementation. Over twenty-four months after the 2019 election, it debated what the term even meant.

I found it bizarre, because I had clearly defined for Johnson what levelling up meant when we first spoke about it during the contest for party leader. This terminology was language I created and used at the education ministry to talk about equal opportunity. It served as our departmental mantra, and its purpose is unambiguous: levelling up is the approach by which we realize equal access – without removing chances away from those who possess it, but rather by expanding options to those that lack them.

Essential Principle

The other key education department term we used, “potential is equally shared around the UK, yet chances are not”, again was a intentional wording, embodying the two parts of a fairness agenda. To begin with, potential shared equally but not nurtured uniformly through our learning institutions. Second, access not provided uniformly by businesses or our economy. Thus, learning and employment were essential to achieving better life chances. This was an mission about the societal structure of our country – supporting individual capabilities and providing access to prospects.

The Actual Outcome

What did levelling up evolve into under the previous government? A towns fund managed by the DLUHC. Hanging baskets and redeveloped traffic systems. An official policy document was published almost thirty-six months after the Prime Minister took office, which saw ongoing initiatives rebadged under the recently branded agenda.

As a result, a broader social mobility agenda went ignored, as well as all the improvement that it may have generated – in funding, commerce, fiscal strategy, taxation and in community development. Additionally, in learning, including a tertiary education that has become a scapegoat for leaders across parties – even though it remains the primary vehicle of life improvement for youth from modest backgrounds, like me, this country has had throughout modern times. Perhaps the sole mechanism of social mobility, operating at scale.

The Role of Ambition

Aspiration is vital for our country to succeed. For hope to exist, there needs to be a believable feeling that hard work and results are related; that if people dream big, they can achieve. For any government, being able to foster a outlook of positivity about the years ahead is critical. Studies by the research body at the university and others, published last month, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I launched while in office – place-based approaches to boosting academic achievement – led to young people in those communities being up to a significant margin more positive about their future than those in similar areas without these programmes in place. The data shows: just making an authentic start on fair opportunity strategies can swiftly and beneficially change how people feel about their future.

Lost Potential

Oblivious to this, and in the middle of its successor selection process, in that period, the Tory administration ended the initiatives. Why would anyone in those communities vote for a political group that did that? This specific initiative is one example of what had the potential to be a game-changing administration strategy on social mobility, but that opportunity was hopelessly squandered. Methods such as this can create belief and drive. Conversely, as the Tories discovered, reneging on commitments of equal opportunity is the biggest blunder any government can make. Voters punished the administration for its incompetence but, perhaps most of all, for its broken promises on social mobility.

The Current Landscape

Now the mandate on social mobility and equality of opportunity has passed to a opposition party. The levelling up rhetoric has been cast off. The new government has its own political rhetoric of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The political group that is gradually replacing the hapless Conservative party, the alternative party, also has its own language – “reindustrialisation”. The terminology to talk about new opportunities in communities like the one I grew up in, in South Yorkshire. It suggests that an industrial past can revive into an revitalized economy.

For voters, it must appear as a Groundhog Day-style loop. Same issue, alternative phrasing. But – as yet – no results.

What Must Change

Whether the government and opposition want to avoid the same fate, both these parties should understand the Tories’ mistakes on social mobility; that fair chance language is simple terminology, but actual achievement of more equal results is far more challenging. Our nation’s persistently low life chances remains the central problem for our country, with the next generation unable to get a proper professional launch, those working hard in full-time jobs with few results after the rent has been paid, and individuals nationwide without any real hope their children will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Leaders can discuss equal chances however much they like. But where is the party that has the thorough strategy on life chances? I see none. The first to achieve this, wins. Not just for their party, but, more importantly, for a entire nation that has never needed fair chances so badly.