I preached levelling up as the essential to Conservative electoral victory – but the former Prime Minister failed to deliver. See the current state.

As the struggling Tories gathers in Manchester for its annual party conference, it has much to ponder regarding its next steps. It’s not even clear if a road forward exists at all. These are tough times for a governing group that now has very little, if anything, new or unique to say to the public.

An Alternate Reality

The situation might have been markedly improved if concrete steps had been made on an policy focus that matters to people throughout the UK: Levelling up. Yet the former leadership lacked the slightest idea on how to turn the popular slogan on social mobility into policy reality. During the initial period after the 2019 election, it argued over what the phrase even meant.

It seemed strange to me, because I’d already told the Prime Minister what levelling up signified when we initially discussed about it during his leadership campaign. The phrase was a concept I originated and used at the DfE to talk about life chances. It was our departmental mantra, and its definition is clear: social mobility is the approach by which we attain equal access – without removing opportunity away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by providing options to those that lack them.

Fundamental Idea

An additional vital ministry expression we used, “talent is spread evenly across our country, but opportunity is not”, served as a deliberate expression, embodying the dual components of a equal opportunity plan. To begin with, talent spread evenly but not developed consistently through our education system. Second, chances not distributed fairly by employers or our economic system. Thus, education and business were essential to achieving better life chances. This represented an mission about the community framework of our country – fostering people’s potential and connecting them to chances.

What Levelling Up Became

What did the social mobility agenda become under Johnson’s Conservatives? Local investment schemes overseen from the DLUHC. Hanging baskets and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. A white paper was released nearly three years after Johnson became leader, which saw existing policy approaches rebadged under the recently branded agenda.

As a result, a broader social mobility agenda went unpursued, as well as all the improvement that it could have inspired – in investment, business, fiscal strategy, tax and in local regeneration. Moreover, in schooling, including a university system that has become a punchbag for leaders across parties – even though it remains the primary vehicle of upward movement for youth from modest backgrounds, personally, this country has had in recent decades. Perhaps the primary source of equal opportunity, functioning widely.

The Role of Ambition

Aspiration is vital for our country to prosper. To foster ambition, there needs to be a believable feeling that hard work and results are linked; that if people aim high, they can attain. For political leadership, being able to instil a feeling of hope about the tomorrow 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 introduced as education secretary – community-focused methods to enhancing learning results – led to youth in those communities being up to nearly one-fifth more positive about their future than those in similar areas without these initiatives in place. The data shows: just making an sincere effort on pro-social mobility policy can quickly and positively change how people feel about their destiny.

Squandered Chances

Oblivious to this, and in the midst of its new leader election, in September 2022, the Conservative government ended the initiatives. Why would anyone in those communities vote for a organization that made that decision? The opportunity areas policy is a clear case of what had the potential to be a transformative Tory policy platform on social mobility, but that possibility was hopelessly squandered. Approaches such as this can generate optimism and ambition. In contrast, as the Tories discovered, failing to deliver of fair chances is the biggest blunder any political party can make. Voters held accountable the administration for its failure but, above all, for its failed pledges on levelling up.

Present Circumstances

Currently the baton on social mobility and fair access has been taken up by a Labour government. The old slogan has been cast off. The new government has its own public messaging of “removing obstacles to success”. The political group that is gradually replacing the struggling Tories, the alternative party, also has its own language – “reindustrialisation”. It’s a phrase to talk about fresh prospects in communities like the one I was raised in, in South Yorkshire. It suggests that an industrial past can revive into an revitalized economy.

To the electorate, it must seem like a repetitive cycle. Identical problem, new terminology. Yet, currently, little improvement.

The Way Forward

If Labour and Reform UK want to prevent the same fate, the respective organizations should take lessons from the Conservatives’ failure on social mobility; that social mobility rhetoric is one thing, but effective implementation of fairer outcomes is significantly more difficult. Britain’s chronically poor life chances remains the key issue for our country, with youth unable to get a decent career start, those working hard in full-time jobs with few results after the rent has been paid, and individuals nationwide without any genuine belief their next generation will be able to do improve in life than they have.

Elected officials can discuss fairer opportunities as much as they want. But where is the party that has the thorough strategy on life chances? I observe no such party. Whichever party succeeds initially, wins. Not just for their organization, but, crucially, for a whole country that has urgently needs equality of opportunity so badly.