🔗 Share this article

As the beleaguered Conservative party meets in Manchester for its annual party conference, it has plenty to consider regarding its path forward. Doubt remains if a viable path exists at all. These are challenging circumstances for a governing group that now has very little, if anything, new or unique to say to the public.

The Missed Opportunity

The situation might have been so different if concrete steps had been made on an priority that is important for people throughout the UK: Equal opportunity. But Boris Johnson’s government lacked the slightest idea on how to convert his zeitgeisty rhetoric on levelling up into concrete action. Over twenty-four months after the 2019 election, it argued over what the concept even meant.

I was perplexed, because I had previously explained to the Prime Minister what levelling up entailed when we initially discussed about it during the contest for party leader. The phrase was a concept I originated and used at the Department for Education to talk about life chances. This became our departmental mantra, and its purpose is clear: levelling up is the approach by which we achieve fair chances – without removing prospects away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by providing opportunities to those that are without.

Essential Principle

Another crucial education department term we used, “ability is distributed uniformly throughout the nation, yet chances are not”, represented another a purposeful phrase, reflecting the dual components of a fairness agenda. To begin with, potential shared equally but not nurtured uniformly through our education system. Furthermore, chances not distributed fairly by businesses or our market. Therefore, learning and employment were crucial to achieving improved equality of opportunity. This was an priority about the societal structure of our country – fostering people’s potential and linking them with prospects.

The Actual Outcome

How did the social mobility agenda turn into under Johnson’s Conservatives? Regional development money managed by the the relevant ministry. Street beautification and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. A government strategy was launched almost thirty-six months after Johnson became leader, which saw ongoing initiatives relabelled under the fresh social mobility slogan.

Therefore, a wider fairness strategy went unpursued, as well as all the change that it might have driven – in funding, business, fiscal strategy, taxation and in place-making. Additionally, in schooling, including a tertiary education that has become a target for elected officials – despite the fact that it remains the most powerful engine of life improvement for individuals from less privileged homes, like me, this country has had over the past 30 years. Perhaps the primary source of social mobility, operating at scale.

The Role of Ambition

Aspiration is vital for our country to succeed. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a believable feeling that hard work and results are linked; that if people aspire, they can succeed. For political leadership, being able to instil a feeling of hope about the years ahead is crucial. Research by the Institute for Policy Research at Bath University and others, published last month, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I established during my tenure – place-based approaches to improving education outcomes – led to young people in those communities being up to a significant margin more hopeful about their prospects than those in equivalent locations without these initiatives in place. The research confirms: just making an genuine beginning on pro-social mobility policy can rapidly and effectively change how people perceive their future.

Missed Opportunities

Unaware of these findings, and in the throes of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in September 2022, the Tory administration closed opportunity areas down. What reason would someone in those areas vote for a party that made that decision? This specific initiative is a single instance of what could have been a revolutionary administration strategy on social mobility, but that chance was hopelessly squandered. Approaches such as this can create belief and drive. In contrast, as the Conservatives discovered, breaking the promise of social mobility is the costliest mistake any government can make. The electorate punished the government for its incompetence but, primarily, for its failed pledges on equal opportunity.

Present Circumstances

At present the mandate on life chances and equality of opportunity has passed to a Labour government. The previous terminology has been cast off. The new government has its own political rhetoric of “removing obstacles to success”. The organization that is steadily supplanting the struggling Conservative party, the alternative party, also has its own terminology – “economic renewal”. This expression to talk about fresh prospects in areas like the one I come from, in South Yorkshire. It promises that an industrial past can be reborn into an industrial future.

For the public, it must feel like a déjà vu experience. Similar challenge, new terminology. However, so far, no progress.

What Must Change

Whether the government and opposition want to prevent the same fate, both these parties should learn from the Tories’ mistakes on social mobility; that equal opportunity talk is simple terminology, but effective implementation of more equal results is much harder. Britain’s endemically weak life chances remains the primary challenge for our country, with youth unable to get a proper professional launch, those working hard in full-time jobs with little to show after the housing costs are covered, and individuals nationwide without any genuine belief their offspring will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Elected officials can discuss equal chances repeatedly. However, which party has the organization that has the complete plan on social mobility? I see none. Whoever gets there first, prevails. Not just for their organization, but, more importantly, for a complete society that has never needed equality of opportunity so desperately.