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While the struggling Tories gathers in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has much to ponder regarding its future direction. There is uncertainty if a viable path is available. We are in challenging circumstances for a governing group that now has almost nothing, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to voters.

The Missed Opportunity

The situation might have been so different if concrete steps had been made on an agenda that is important for people across the country: Equal opportunity. Yet the former leadership lacked the basic understanding on how to turn the popular slogan on social mobility into actual implementation. For the two years after the 2019 election, it debated what the term actually signified.

I found it bizarre, because I’d already told Johnson what social mobility entailed when we originally talked about it during the contest for party leader. The phrase was a term I developed and used at the education ministry to talk about equal opportunity. This became our departmental mantra, and its purpose is unambiguous: levelling up is the method by which we attain equal access – without removing opportunity away from those who possess it, but rather by providing opportunities to those that lack them.

The Core Concept

Another crucial DfE phrase we used, “talent is spread evenly throughout the nation, however access isn’t”, served as a purposeful phrase, reflecting the two parts of a equal opportunity plan. Initially, ability distributed uniformly but not nurtured uniformly through our schools and colleges. Additionally, access not provided uniformly by the private sector or our economy. Thus, learning and employment were crucial to achieving better life chances. This represented an mission about the community framework of our country – supporting human talent and linking them with prospects.

The Reality of Implementation

What did the social mobility agenda turn into under Johnson’s Conservatives? A towns fund overseen from the the relevant ministry. Street beautification and rearranged intersections. A white paper was released a significant period after Johnson became leader, which saw existing policy approaches rebadged under the fresh social mobility slogan.

Therefore, a wider fairness strategy went undeveloped, as well as all the improvement that it might have driven – in funding, enterprise, financial planning, revenue and in community development. And, of course, in schooling, including a tertiary education that has become a target for elected officials – despite the fact that it remains the primary vehicle of life improvement for individuals from less privileged homes, personally, this country has had in recent decades. Perhaps the only engine of fair chances, operating at scale.

The Importance of Aspiration

Aspiration is essential for our country to succeed. To foster ambition, there needs to be a believable feeling that effort and reward are connected; that if people aim high, they can achieve. For all administrations, being able to foster a outlook of positivity about the years ahead is important. Analysis by the Institute for Policy Research at the university and others, recently released, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I established during my tenure – locally targeted strategies to boosting academic achievement – led to students in those neighborhoods being up to nearly one-fifth more positive about their future than those in equivalent locations without these schemes in place. The evidence is clear: just making an genuine beginning on pro-social mobility policy can rapidly and effectively change how people feel about their destiny.

Squandered Chances

Ignoring this evidence, and in the throes of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in autumn 2022, the Tory administration ended the initiatives. What reason would someone in those areas vote for a organization that did that? The targeted programme is one example of what could have been a revolutionary Tory policy platform on social mobility, but that opportunity was hopelessly squandered. Strategies such as this can create belief and drive. On the other hand, as the ruling party learned, failing to deliver of fair chances is the most expensive error any political party can make. The electorate held accountable the leadership for its failure but, above all, for its failed pledges on equal opportunity.

Present Circumstances

At present the responsibility on social mobility and fair access has been taken up by a new administration. The previous terminology has been abandoned. The current administration has its own political rhetoric of “removing obstacles to success”. The party that is gradually replacing the failing Tories, the alternative party, also has its own message – “industrial revival”. It’s a phrase to talk about fresh prospects in areas like the one I come from, in South Yorkshire. It promises that an industrial past can reincarnate into an industrial future.

To the electorate, it must appear as a déjà vu experience. Similar challenge, alternative phrasing. But – as yet – no results.

Lessons for the Future

If Labour and Reform UK want to prevent the identical outcome, each group should understand the Conservatives’ failure on levelling up; that equal opportunity talk is easy to say, but effective implementation of fairer outcomes is much harder. Our nation’s chronically poor equal opportunity remains the primary challenge for our country, with young people unable to get a decent career start, those laboring in full-time jobs with few results after the rent has been paid, and people across the country without any actual expectation their offspring will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Elected officials can mention equal chances however much they like. However, which party has the party that has the comprehensive policy agenda on equal opportunity? I see none. The first to achieve this, prevails. Not just for their party, but, more importantly, for a complete society that has urgently needs equality of opportunity so desperately.