🔗 Share this article

While the beleaguered Tories meets in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its path forward. It’s not even clear if a clear direction exists at all. These are difficult days for a governing group that now has almost nothing, if anything, new or unique to say to the public.

What Could Have Been

Things could have turned out vastly better if tangible progress had been made on an policy focus that is important for people across the country: Levelling up. Yet Boris Johnson’s government lacked the basic understanding on how to transform his zeitgeisty rhetoric on levelling up into policy reality. For the two years after the general election, it debated what the phrase actually signified.

It seemed strange to me, because I had previously explained to the Prime Minister what levelling up meant when we initially discussed about it during his leadership campaign. The phrase was a concept I originated and used at the education ministry to talk about equal opportunity. This became our guiding principle, and its purpose is straightforward: social mobility is the approach by which we achieve equal access – without removing opportunity away from those who possess it, but rather by extending opportunities to those that don’t.

The Core Concept

The other key education department term we used, “potential is equally shared throughout the nation, but opportunity is not”, served as a deliberate expression, embodying the dual components of a fairness agenda. To begin with, potential shared equally but not cultivated evenly through our learning institutions. Furthermore, opportunities not spread evenly by the private sector or our economic system. As a result, education and business were crucial to achieving better life chances. This represented an agenda about the social fabric of our country – fostering individual capabilities and providing access to prospects.

The Reality of Implementation

How did levelling up become under Johnson’s Conservatives? Regional development money overseen from the the relevant ministry. Decorative floral displays and redeveloped traffic systems. A white paper was published a significant period after the Prime Minister took office, which saw current strategies rebadged under the new levelling up banner.

As a result, a broader social mobility agenda went undeveloped, as well as all the reform that it could have inspired – in capital, commerce, financial planning, revenue and in local regeneration. Moreover, in education, including a university system that has become a scapegoat for leaders across parties – despite the fact that it remains the most powerful engine of social mobility for individuals from less privileged homes, like me, this country has had throughout modern times. Perhaps the only engine of social mobility, functioning widely.

The Importance of Aspiration

Hope is essential for our country to succeed. To foster ambition, there needs to be a realistic expectation that dedication and outcome are related; that if people dream big, they can attain. For political leadership, being able to foster a outlook of positivity about the future is important. Studies by the Institute for Policy Research at the university and others, recently released, showed that the DfE’s 12 “opportunity areas” I launched while in office – locally targeted strategies to enhancing learning results – led to young people in those communities being up to nearly one-fifth more positive about their life ahead than those in similar areas without these programmes in place. The data shows: just making an authentic start on pro-social mobility policy can quickly and positively change how people perceive their future.

Squandered Chances

Ignoring this evidence, and in the midst of its new leader election, in autumn 2022, the Tory administration ended the initiatives. What reason would someone in those regions vote for a political group that took that action? The targeted programme is a single instance of what had the potential to be a revolutionary administration strategy on social mobility, but that opportunity was totally misused. Approaches such as this can create belief and drive. Conversely, as the ruling party learned, failing to deliver of equal opportunity is the costliest mistake any political party can make. The public punished the government for its ineffectiveness but, perhaps most of all, for its unfulfilled commitments on social mobility.

Present Circumstances

Now the baton on life chances and equality of opportunity has been transferred to a opposition party. The levelling up rhetoric has been cast off. Labour has its own policy language of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The political group that is gradually replacing the struggling incumbents, the challenger, also has its own language – “industrial revival”. This expression to talk about new opportunities in areas like the one I grew up in, in my hometown. It promises that an former economic strength can reincarnate into an revitalized economy.

For the public, it must seem like a Groundhog Day-style loop. Similar challenge, new terminology. However, so far, no progress.

What Must Change

Should the current and alternative parties want to prevent the same fate, each group should learn from the previous government’s errors on social mobility; that fair chance language is one thing, but actual achievement of improved opportunities is much harder. Britain’s chronically poor life chances remains the central problem for our country, with the next generation unable to get a decent career start, those working hard in employment with few results after the living expenses are met, and people across the country without any actual expectation their offspring will be able to do advance in life than they have.

Elected officials can discuss fairer opportunities repeatedly. Yet where is the party that has the comprehensive policy agenda on equal opportunity? I observe no such party. Whichever party succeeds initially, prevails. Not just for their party, but, significantly, for a whole country that has urgently needs equality of opportunity so badly.