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As the beleaguered Conservative party convenes in Manchester for its annual party conference, it has plenty to consider regarding its path forward. Doubt remains if a road forward exists at all. These are tough times for a political party that now has almost nothing, if anything, new or unique to say to the public.

An Alternate Reality

Things could have turned out vastly better if real advances had been made on an policy focus that resonates with people throughout the UK: Levelling up. Yet the former leadership did not possess the first clue on how to convert the trendy talk on levelling up into concrete action. For the two years after the general election, it discussed what the phrase even meant.

I found it bizarre, because I’d already told Johnson what social mobility entailed when we initially discussed about it during his leadership campaign. The expression was language I created and used at the DfE to talk about life chances. This became our departmental mantra, and its definition is clear: levelling up is the approach by which we attain equal access – not by taking opportunity away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by extending opportunities to those that are without.

The Core Concept

Another crucial education department term we used, “potential is equally shared throughout the nation, but opportunity is not”, again was a intentional wording, reflecting the dual components of a social mobility strategy. To begin with, ability distributed uniformly but not developed consistently through our learning institutions. Furthermore, opportunities not spread evenly by businesses or our market. Thus, education and business were crucial to achieving better life chances. This constituted an mission about the societal structure of our country – investing in human talent and connecting them to prospects.

The Actual Outcome

How did the social mobility agenda turn into under Johnson’s Conservatives? Regional development money overseen from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Decorative floral displays and rearranged intersections. A white paper was launched a significant period after the leadership change, which saw existing policy approaches rebadged under the recently branded agenda.

Consequently, a broader social mobility agenda went ignored, as well as all the reform that it could have inspired – in funding, enterprise, financial planning, revenue and in place-making. And, of course, in learning, including a university system that has become a target for politicians of all stripes – although it remains the primary vehicle of social mobility for young working-class people, like me, this country has had in recent decades. Maybe the primary source of equal opportunity, functioning widely.

The Role of Ambition

Ambition is crucial for our country to thrive. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a realistic expectation that hard work and results are related; that if people aspire, they can achieve. For political leadership, being able to create a sense of optimism about the future is important. Studies by the academic institution at the university and others, published last month, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I launched while in office – locally targeted strategies to enhancing learning results – led to young people in those areas being up to a significant margin more positive about their future than those in comparable communities without these schemes in place. The data shows: just making an authentic start on pro-social mobility policy can swiftly and beneficially change how people view their future.

Lost Potential

Unaware of these findings, and in the middle of its successor selection process, in that period, the Tory administration closed opportunity areas down. What reason would someone in those areas vote for a organization that did that? The opportunity areas policy is one example of what might have become a transformative administration strategy on levelling up, but that chance was hopelessly squandered. Methods such as this can inspire hope and aspiration. On the other hand, as the ruling party discovered, reneging on commitments of social mobility is the costliest mistake any government can make. The electorate penalized the administration for its incompetence but, perhaps most of all, for its broken promises on equal opportunity.

Today’s Political Reality

Currently the baton on equal opportunity and equal chances 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 steadily supplanting the hapless incumbents, the challenger, also has its own language – “industrial revival”. The terminology to talk about additional chances in areas like the one I was raised in, in South Yorkshire. It suggests that an industrial past can revive into an modern manufacturing sector.

For voters, it must appear as a déjà vu experience. Same issue, new terminology. Yet, currently, little improvement.

The Way Forward

Should the current and alternative parties want to escape the identical outcome, each group should take lessons from the Conservatives’ failure on levelling up; that fair chance language is one thing, but effective implementation of fairer outcomes is much harder. The UK’s chronically poor equal opportunity remains the primary challenge for our country, with youth unable to get a decent career start, those putting in effort in full-time jobs with few results after the housing costs are covered, and people across the country without any genuine belief their children will be able to do improve in life than they have.

Leaders can discuss equal chances however much they like. Yet where is the political group that has the thorough strategy on social mobility? I see none. The first to achieve this, prevails. Not just for their organization, but, significantly, for a entire nation that has desperately requires equality of opportunity so badly.