🔗 Share this article

As the existentially challenged Tories convenes in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its future direction. There is uncertainty if a viable path is available. These are challenging circumstances for a governing group that now has almost nothing, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the public.

An Alternate Reality

The situation might have been markedly improved if tangible progress had been made on an policy focus that resonates with people across the country: Social mobility. Yet the former leadership did not possess the slightest idea on how to transform the popular slogan on social mobility into actual implementation. Over twenty-four months after the 2019 election, it discussed what the concept truly represented.

I found it bizarre, because I had clearly defined for the Prime Minister what levelling up signified when we initially discussed about it during his leadership campaign. This terminology was language I created and used at the education ministry to talk about life chances. It served as our core mission, and its meaning is unambiguous: levelling up is the means by which we achieve equal access – not through reducing chances away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by providing opportunities to those that are without.

Essential Principle

The other key DfE phrase we used, “ability is distributed uniformly around the UK, however access isn’t”, represented another a deliberate expression, representing the two parts of a fairness agenda. Initially, talent spread evenly but not nurtured uniformly through our schools and colleges. Additionally, chances not distributed fairly by employers or our market. As a result, education and business were essential to achieving improved equality of opportunity. This constituted an agenda about the community framework of our country – fostering individual capabilities and providing access to chances.

The Actual Outcome

What did levelling up turn into under the Tory administration? Local investment schemes managed by the DLUHC. Decorative floral displays and rearranged intersections. A white paper was launched a significant period after Johnson became leader, which saw existing policy approaches relabelled under the fresh social mobility slogan.

Therefore, a broader social mobility agenda went ignored, as well as all the change that it could have inspired – in funding, commerce, fiscal strategy, revenue and in local regeneration. Additionally, in education, including a university system that has become a scapegoat for politicians of all stripes – although it remains the primary vehicle of life improvement for young working-class people, personally, this country has had over the past 30 years. Maybe the sole mechanism of social mobility, operating at scale.

Why Hope Matters

Ambition is essential for our country to prosper. For hope to exist, there needs to be a credible sense that dedication and outcome are connected; that if people dream big, they can attain. For all administrations, being able to instil a sense of optimism about the tomorrow is critical. Analysis by the academic institution at Bath University and others, published last month, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I established during my tenure – community-focused methods to boosting academic achievement – led to youth in those communities being up to a significant margin more optimistic about their future than those in comparable communities without these initiatives in place. The evidence is clear: just making an genuine beginning on fair opportunity strategies can swiftly and beneficially change how people view their prospects.

Squandered Chances

Ignoring this evidence, and in the throes of its new leader election, in that period, the Conservative government closed opportunity areas down. Why should any person in those areas vote for a political group that made that decision? The opportunity areas policy is a clear case of what had the potential to be a revolutionary Tory policy platform on levelling up, but that possibility was hopelessly squandered. Approaches such as this can inspire hope and aspiration. Conversely, as the Conservatives discovered, failing to deliver of social mobility is the costliest mistake any political party can make. Voters held accountable the leadership for its incompetence but, above all, for its failed pledges on levelling up.

The Current Landscape

At present the baton on social mobility and fair access has been taken up by a Labour government. The previous terminology has been cast off. The current administration has its own political rhetoric of “eliminating hurdles to advancement”. The party that is increasingly displacing the failing incumbents, the alternative party, also has its own terminology – “reindustrialisation”. This expression to talk about additional chances in regions like the one I grew up in, in South Yorkshire. It claims that an industrial past can be reborn into an modern manufacturing sector.

To the electorate, it must appear as a repetitive cycle. Similar challenge, alternative phrasing. Yet, currently, little improvement.

The Way Forward

Whether the government and opposition want to escape the similar destiny, each group should understand the Conservatives’ failure on social mobility; that equal opportunity talk is one thing, but successful delivery of improved opportunities is much harder. Britain’s persistently low equal opportunity remains the central problem for our country, with the next generation unable to get a good job beginning, those laboring in occupations with minimal progress after the rent has been paid, and individuals nationwide without any actual expectation their offspring will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Elected officials can mention fairer opportunities however much they like. However, which party has the organization that has the complete plan on life chances? I observe no such party. Whichever party succeeds initially, wins. Not just for themselves, but, more importantly, for a complete society that has desperately requires equality of opportunity so desperately.