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As the existentially challenged Tories meets in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has much to ponder regarding its next steps. Doubt remains if a viable path remains open. These are difficult days for a political party that now has almost nothing, if anything, new or unique to say to the electorate.

The Missed Opportunity

Things could have turned out markedly improved if concrete steps had been made on an priority that is important for people throughout the UK: Equal opportunity. Yet the former leadership hadn’t got the basic understanding on how to transform his zeitgeisty rhetoric on social mobility into actual implementation. During the initial period after the general election, it discussed what the term actually signified.

I found it bizarre, because I had clearly defined for 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. It served as our core mission, and its meaning is straightforward: levelling up is the method by which we attain equality of opportunity – without removing opportunity away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by expanding chances to those that don’t.

The Core Concept

The other key education department term we used, “talent is spread evenly throughout the nation, yet chances are not”, represented another a intentional wording, reflecting the two halves of a fairness agenda. Initially, ability distributed uniformly but not nurtured uniformly through our learning institutions. Furthermore, access not provided uniformly by the private sector or our economy. Thus, schools and companies were crucial to achieving stronger social mobility. This constituted an agenda about the community framework of our country – supporting human talent and linking them with chances.

The Reality of Implementation

What did levelling up evolve into under Johnson’s Conservatives? Regional development money administered out of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Street beautification and rearranged intersections. A government strategy was launched a significant period after the leadership change, which saw ongoing initiatives relabelled under the fresh social mobility slogan.

Therefore, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went ignored, as well as all the reform that it may have generated – in investment, commerce, financial planning, tax and in community development. Additionally, in education, including a higher education sector that has become a target for leaders across parties – although it remains the most powerful engine of upward movement for individuals from less privileged homes, personally, this country has had over the past 30 years. Possibly the only engine of social mobility, operating at scale.

The Role of Ambition

Ambition is vital for our country to succeed. For hope to exist, there needs to be a believable feeling that hard work and results are related; that if people aspire, they can achieve. For all administrations, being able to create a outlook of positivity about the tomorrow is crucial. Studies by the Institute for Policy Research at Bath University and others, recently released, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I established during my tenure – place-based approaches to improving education outcomes – led to students in those communities being up to nearly one-fifth more optimistic about their future than those in equivalent locations without these initiatives in place. The research confirms: just making an sincere effort on pro-social mobility policy can swiftly and beneficially change how people view their future.

Lost Potential

Ignoring this evidence, and in the middle of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in September 2022, the ruling party ended the initiatives. Why would anyone in those communities vote for a political group that did that? The targeted programme is a single instance of what might have become a game-changing Tory policy platform on social mobility, but that possibility was completely wasted. Strategies such as this can generate optimism and ambition. On the other hand, as the ruling party found out, failing to deliver of social mobility is the biggest blunder any political party can make. The public punished the leadership for its incompetence but, perhaps most of all, for its unfulfilled commitments on social mobility.

The Current Landscape

Currently the mandate on equal opportunity and equality of opportunity has been taken up by a new administration. The old slogan has been discarded. The current administration has its own political rhetoric of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The party that is gradually replacing the hapless Conservative party, Reform UK, also has its own language – “industrial revival”. It’s a phrase to talk about fresh prospects in regions like the one I come from, in South Yorkshire. It claims that an industrial past can revive into an modern manufacturing sector.

For the public, it must seem like a déjà vu experience. Identical problem, new terminology. Yet, currently, little improvement.

Lessons for the Future

Whether the government and opposition want to escape the same fate, both these parties should understand the Tories’ mistakes on social mobility; that equal opportunity talk is easy to say, but effective implementation of fairer outcomes is much harder. The UK’s persistently low equal opportunity remains the central problem for our country, with the next generation unable to get a good job beginning, those putting in effort in employment with minimal progress after the housing costs are covered, and individuals nationwide without any real hope their offspring will be able to do improve in life than they have.

Leaders can discuss equal chances however much they like. Yet where is the political group that has the complete plan on equal opportunity? I observe no such party. The first to achieve this, succeeds. Not only for their organization, but, significantly, for a entire nation that has urgently needs equality of opportunity so desperately.