I preached equal opportunity as the key to Conservative electoral victory – but the former Prime Minister neglected the agenda. Observe the consequences.

While the beleaguered Tories convenes in its conference city for its yearly gathering, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its future direction. Doubt remains if a road forward remains open. These are tough times for a political party that now has almost nothing, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to voters.

The Missed Opportunity

The situation might have been markedly improved if real advances had been made on an policy focus that matters to people across the country: Social mobility. However the previous administration lacked the first clue on how to turn the popular slogan on social mobility into policy reality. Over twenty-four months after the 2019 election, it argued over what the concept actually signified.

It seemed strange to me, because I’d already told the Prime Minister what levelling up signified when we first spoke about it during the contest for party leader. This terminology was a term I developed and used at the education ministry to talk about equal opportunity. It served as our guiding principle, and its meaning is straightforward: levelling up is the method by which we attain equality of opportunity – without removing opportunity away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by extending options to those that are without.

Fundamental Idea

An additional vital DfE phrase we used, “ability is distributed uniformly around the UK, but opportunity is not”, again was a purposeful phrase, reflecting the two parts of a fairness agenda. Initially, potential shared equally but not cultivated evenly through our schools and colleges. Additionally, chances not distributed fairly by businesses or our economic system. As a result, learning and employment were key to achieving better life chances. This was an agenda about the societal structure of our country – supporting individual capabilities and providing access to prospects.

The Reality of Implementation

How did levelling up become under the previous government? Local investment schemes administered out of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Street beautification and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. A government strategy was published almost thirty-six months after the Prime Minister took office, which saw existing policy approaches rebadged under the new levelling up banner.

Consequently, a broader social mobility agenda went unpursued, as well as all the improvement that it could have inspired – in investment, enterprise, fiscal strategy, tax and in community development. Additionally, in schooling, including a tertiary education that has become a punchbag for politicians of all stripes – despite the fact that it remains the strongest driver of life improvement for youth from modest backgrounds, like me, this country has had throughout modern times. Possibly the sole mechanism of equal opportunity, working extensively.

The Importance of Aspiration

Aspiration is essential for our country to prosper. For hope to exist, there needs to be a believable feeling that dedication and outcome are related; that if people aim high, they can succeed. For political leadership, being able to create a sense of optimism about the tomorrow is important. Analysis by the Institute for Policy Research at the academic establishment and others, published last month, showed that the ministry’s focus zones I established during my tenure – place-based approaches to enhancing learning results – led to students in those areas being up to nearly one-fifth more hopeful about their life ahead than those in equivalent locations without these schemes in place. The evidence is clear: just making an authentic start on equal chance initiatives can quickly and positively change how people perceive their destiny.

Missed Opportunities

Unaware of these findings, and in the throes of its successor selection process, in September 2022, the Conservative government terminated the programmes. Why should any person in those regions vote for a party that did that? The targeted programme is a single instance of what might have become a revolutionary Tory policy platform on levelling up, but that opportunity was hopelessly squandered. Approaches such as this can generate optimism and ambition. Conversely, as the Conservatives discovered, breaking the promise of equal opportunity is the costliest mistake any political party can make. The public penalized the leadership for its ineffectiveness but, perhaps most of all, for its broken promises on levelling up.

Present Circumstances

Now the mandate on life chances and equal chances has been transferred to a new administration. The levelling up rhetoric has been abandoned. Labour has its own political rhetoric of “removing obstacles to success”. The party that is steadily supplanting the struggling Tories, the challenger, also has its own terminology – “economic renewal”. It’s a phrase to talk about new opportunities in communities like the one I was raised in, in my hometown. It suggests that an industrial past can revive into an industrial future.

To the electorate, it must seem like a déjà vu experience. Similar challenge, new terminology. Yet, currently, little improvement.

Lessons for the Future

Whether the government and opposition want to avoid the identical outcome, the respective organizations should take lessons from the Conservatives’ failure on levelling up; that fair chance language is simple terminology, but effective implementation of fairer outcomes is much harder. Our nation’s endemically weak life chances remains the key issue for our country, with young people unable to get a good job beginning, those working hard in employment with few results after the housing costs are covered, and people across the country without any real hope their children will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Elected officials can mention improved access repeatedly. But where is the organization that has the comprehensive policy agenda on social mobility? I observe no such party. Whichever party succeeds initially, succeeds. Not just for themselves, but, significantly, for a entire nation that has urgently needs equal access so urgently.