🔗 Share this article

While the beleaguered Conservative party convenes in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its path forward. It’s not even clear if a road forward remains open. We are in challenging circumstances for a governing group that now has little, if anything, new or unique to say to the public.

The Missed Opportunity

Things could have turned out markedly improved if tangible progress had been made on an policy focus that is important for people across the country: Equal opportunity. Yet the previous administration lacked the slightest idea on how to turn the trendy talk on social mobility into concrete action. For the two years after the general election, it debated what the phrase truly represented.

I found it bizarre, because I’d already told the Prime Minister what social mobility 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 social mobility. It was our guiding principle, and its definition is straightforward: social mobility is the means by which we realize fair chances – not through reducing prospects away from those who already have it, but rather by extending options to those that don’t.

The Core Concept

An additional vital education department term we used, “talent is spread evenly throughout the nation, yet chances are not”, again was a purposeful phrase, reflecting the two halves of a fairness agenda. Initially, talent spread evenly but not cultivated evenly through our schools and colleges. Second, chances not distributed fairly by employers or our economic system. Therefore, learning and employment were key to achieving improved equality of opportunity. This was an agenda about the social fabric of our country – fostering individual capabilities and connecting them to chances.

What Levelling Up Became

What did the social mobility agenda become under Johnson’s Conservatives? Regional development money managed by the the relevant ministry. Street beautification and redeveloped traffic systems. A white paper was launched a significant period after the leadership change, which saw existing policy approaches relabelled under the fresh social mobility slogan.

Consequently, a broader social mobility agenda went unpursued, as well as all the change that it may have generated – in investment, enterprise, financial planning, taxation and in community development. Additionally, in learning, including a higher education sector that has become a scapegoat for leaders across parties – although it remains the most powerful engine of upward movement for young working-class people, including myself, this country has had in recent decades. Possibly the primary source of social mobility, working extensively.

The Importance of Aspiration

Aspiration is crucial for our country to thrive. To foster ambition, there needs to be a credible sense that dedication and outcome are connected; that if people aim high, they can succeed. For any government, being able to foster a outlook of positivity about the tomorrow is crucial. Research by the Institute for Policy Research at the academic establishment and others, published last month, showed that the ministry’s focus zones I introduced as education secretary – locally targeted strategies to improving education outcomes – led to youth in those neighborhoods being up to 18 percentage points more optimistic about their life ahead than those in similar areas without these initiatives in place. The evidence is clear: just making an authentic start on pro-social mobility policy can quickly and positively change how people perceive their destiny.

Lost Potential

Ignoring this evidence, and in the throes of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in autumn 2022, the Tory administration ended the initiatives. Why would anyone in those areas vote for a political group that took that action? The targeted programme is a clear case of what might have become a game-changing Conservative government agenda on levelling up, but that possibility was totally misused. Methods such as this can create belief and drive. On the other hand, as the Tories learned, breaking the promise of equal opportunity is the most expensive error any government can make. The electorate penalized the leadership for its ineffectiveness but, primarily, for its failed pledges on levelling up.

The Current Landscape

Now the mandate on equal opportunity and fair access has passed to a opposition party. The previous terminology has been abandoned. The new government has its own public messaging of “removing obstacles to success”. The political group that is gradually replacing the struggling Tories, Reform UK, also has its own message – “reindustrialisation”. This expression to talk about additional chances in areas like the one I come from, in South Yorkshire. It promises that an former economic strength can reincarnate into an industrial future.

To the electorate, it must appear as a Groundhog Day-style loop. Similar challenge, new terminology. But – as yet – no results.

The Way Forward

Should the current and alternative parties want to prevent the similar destiny, each group should take lessons from the previous government’s errors on social mobility; that social mobility rhetoric is one thing, but actual achievement of improved opportunities is far more challenging. Our nation’s endemically weak equal opportunity remains the key issue for our country, with young people unable to get a proper professional launch, those working hard in full-time jobs with few results after the rent has been paid, and citizens throughout the UK without any real hope their offspring will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Politicians can discuss improved access repeatedly. But where is the organization that has the complete plan on social mobility? I see none. Whoever gets there first, prevails. Not only for their organization, but, significantly, for a whole country that has never needed equality of opportunity so urgently.