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While the beleaguered Conservative party meets in its conference city for its annual party conference, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its future direction. It’s not even clear if a viable path is available. These are tough times for a political party that now has almost nothing, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to voters.

What Could Have Been

Things could have turned out vastly better if real advances had been made on an policy focus that matters to people throughout the UK: Social mobility. Yet the previous administration did not possess the slightest idea on how to convert his zeitgeisty rhetoric on levelling up into actual implementation. For the two years after the 2019 election, it discussed what the term even meant.

I found it bizarre, because I had previously explained to Johnson what levelling up signified when we originally talked about it during the contest for party leader. The phrase was language I created and used at the education ministry to talk about equal opportunity. This became our guiding principle, and its purpose is straightforward: levelling up is the approach by which we achieve equal access – without removing opportunity away from those who possess it, but rather by extending chances to those that lack them.

The Core Concept

The other key DfE phrase we used, “ability is distributed uniformly around the UK, but opportunity is not”, again was a deliberate expression, embodying the two parts of a social mobility strategy. To begin with, ability distributed uniformly but not nurtured uniformly through our learning institutions. Furthermore, chances not distributed fairly by businesses or our market. As a result, schools and companies were essential to achieving stronger social mobility. This represented an mission about the societal structure of our country – supporting individual capabilities and linking them with prospects.

The Actual Outcome

What did levelling up turn into under Johnson’s Conservatives? Regional development money administered out of the DLUHC. Hanging baskets and redeveloped traffic systems. An official policy document was released a significant period after the leadership change, which saw existing policy approaches relabelled under the new levelling up banner.

Therefore, a broader social mobility agenda went unpursued, as well as all the improvement that it could have inspired – in investment, business, fiscal strategy, revenue and in local regeneration. 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 youth from modest backgrounds, including myself, this country has had in recent decades. Possibly the primary source of social mobility, functioning widely.

The Role of Ambition

Aspiration is vital for our country to prosper. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a credible sense that hard work and results are connected; that if people aspire, they can attain. For political leadership, being able to instil 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 DfE’s 12 “opportunity areas” I introduced as education secretary – locally targeted strategies to boosting academic achievement – led to young people in those communities being up to a significant margin more hopeful about their life ahead than those in comparable communities without these programmes in place. The evidence is clear: just making an genuine beginning on equal chance initiatives can quickly and positively change how people perceive their prospects.

Missed Opportunities

Ignoring this evidence, 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 communities vote for a party that did that? This specific initiative is one example of what might have become a game-changing administration strategy on levelling up, but that chance was hopelessly squandered. Strategies such as this can generate optimism and ambition. Conversely, as the ruling party discovered, failing to deliver of equal opportunity is the most expensive error any political party can make. The electorate punished the government for its failure but, above all, for its failed pledges on equal opportunity.

Present Circumstances

Currently the mandate on equal opportunity and fair access has been transferred to a opposition party. The previous terminology has been discarded. The current administration has its own policy language of “eliminating hurdles to advancement”. The party that is gradually replacing the struggling Tories, the challenger, also has its own language – “economic renewal”. It’s a phrase to talk about fresh prospects in regions like the one I grew up in, in the region. It claims that an former economic strength can be reborn into an industrial future.

For voters, it must appear as a repetitive cycle. Same issue, new terminology. Yet, currently, little improvement.

The Way Forward

Should the current and alternative parties want to avoid the same fate, both these parties should understand the Tories’ mistakes on levelling up; that social mobility rhetoric is one thing, but successful delivery of more equal results is much harder. Our nation’s endemically weak life chances remains the key issue for our country, with the next generation unable to get a decent career start, those putting in effort in full-time jobs with little to show after the rent has been paid, and individuals nationwide without any genuine belief their children will be able to do advance in life than they have.

Elected officials can talk about improved access however much they like. Yet where is the party that has the comprehensive policy agenda on social mobility? None appear to exist. The first to achieve this, wins. Not just for their party, but, significantly, for a complete society that has never needed equal access so badly.