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While the struggling Tories convenes in Manchester for its annual party conference, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its next steps. Doubt remains if a road forward is available. These are difficult days for a political party that now has almost nothing, if anything, new or unique to say to voters.

An Alternate Reality

The situation might have been vastly better if concrete steps had been made on an policy focus that resonates with people nationwide: Social mobility. However the former leadership did not possess the slightest idea on how to convert the popular slogan on levelling up into concrete action. Over twenty-four months after the 2019 election, it debated what the term actually signified.

It seemed strange to me, because I had previously explained to Johnson what levelling up signified when we originally talked about it during the contest for party leader. The expression was a concept I originated and used at the DfE to talk about social mobility. It was our departmental mantra, and its purpose is straightforward: levelling up is the method by which we realize equal access – not through reducing chances away from those who possess it, but rather by expanding chances to those that don’t.

The Core Concept

Another crucial ministry expression we used, “ability is distributed uniformly around the UK, yet chances are not”, again was a intentional wording, reflecting the dual components of a equal opportunity plan. To begin with, potential shared equally but not nurtured uniformly through our education system. Second, access not provided uniformly by the private sector or our economic system. As a result, schools and companies were crucial to achieving better life chances. This represented an mission about the societal structure of our country – investing in human talent and linking them with opportunities.

The Actual Outcome

What did the social mobility agenda become under the previous government? Regional development money overseen from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Street beautification and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. An official policy document was launched a significant period after Johnson became leader, which saw current strategies rebadged under the recently branded agenda.

Therefore, a broader social mobility agenda went undeveloped, as well as all the change that it might have driven – in investment, enterprise, economic policy, tax and in place-making. And, of course, in education, including a higher education sector that has become a target for politicians of all stripes – although it remains the primary vehicle of social mobility for young working-class people, including myself, this country has had in recent decades. Maybe the primary source of fair chances, operating at scale.

Why Hope Matters

Ambition is crucial for our country to thrive. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a realistic expectation that dedication and outcome are related; that if people dream big, they can achieve. For all administrations, being able to create a sense of optimism about the future is crucial. Studies by the Institute for Policy Research at the university and others, recently released, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I introduced as education secretary – community-focused methods to enhancing learning results – led to students in those neighborhoods being up to 18 percentage points more hopeful about their prospects than those in equivalent locations without these programmes in place. The evidence is clear: just making an authentic start on pro-social mobility policy can rapidly and effectively change how people feel about their destiny.

Missed Opportunities

Oblivious to this, and in the middle of its new leader election, in that period, the Tory administration ended the initiatives. Why should any person in those regions vote for a party that did that? This specific initiative is a clear case of what had the potential to be a game-changing administration strategy on levelling up, but that chance was completely wasted. Methods such as this can create belief and drive. On the other hand, as the ruling party discovered, reneging on commitments of equal opportunity is the biggest blunder any government can make. The public penalized the administration for its ineffectiveness but, perhaps most of all, for its unfulfilled commitments on levelling up.

The Current Landscape

At present the baton on social mobility and equal chances has been taken up by a opposition party. The levelling up rhetoric has been abandoned. The current administration has its own policy language of “eliminating hurdles to advancement”. The party that is steadily supplanting the hapless incumbents, Reform UK, also has its own message – “reindustrialisation”. The terminology to talk about fresh prospects in regions like the one I was raised in, in my hometown. It claims that an industrial past can be reborn into an modern manufacturing sector.

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

What Must Change

Should the current and alternative parties want to escape the same fate, the respective organizations should take lessons from the Conservatives’ failure on levelling up; that social mobility rhetoric is one thing, but actual achievement of more equal results is much harder. Britain’s persistently low life chances remains the key issue for our country, with young people unable to get a proper professional launch, those working hard in employment with minimal progress after the housing costs are covered, and individuals nationwide without any genuine belief their offspring will be able to do improve in life than they have.

Leaders can talk about equal chances as much as they want. Yet where is the party that has the complete plan on social mobility? None appear to exist. The first to achieve this, succeeds. Not only for their party, but, crucially, for a entire nation that has desperately requires equality of opportunity so desperately.