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As the existentially challenged Tories gathers in Manchester for its annual party conference, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its next steps. Doubt remains if a viable path exists at all. We are in challenging circumstances for a political party that now has very little, if anything, new or unique to say to voters.

The Missed Opportunity

The situation might have been markedly improved if tangible progress had been made on an policy focus that resonates with people nationwide: Equal opportunity. But the former leadership hadn’t got the basic understanding on how to transform his zeitgeisty rhetoric on social mobility into actual implementation. Over twenty-four months after the 2019 election, it argued over what the phrase actually signified.

I found it bizarre, because I had clearly defined for the Prime Minister what levelling up meant when we initially discussed about it during his leadership campaign. The expression was a term I developed and used at the Department for Education to talk about life chances. It served as our core mission, and its meaning is clear: levelling up is the means by which we realize equality of opportunity – not through reducing opportunity away from those who already have it, but rather by expanding opportunities to those that are without.

Essential Principle

Another crucial DfE phrase we used, “ability is distributed uniformly across our country, but opportunity is not”, again was a deliberate expression, representing the dual components of a equal opportunity plan. Initially, ability distributed uniformly but not developed consistently through our learning institutions. Second, opportunities not spread evenly by businesses or our economy. As a result, learning and employment were essential to achieving better life chances. This represented an priority about the community framework of our country – investing in people’s potential and linking them with prospects.

What Levelling Up Became

How did levelling up evolve into under the Tory administration? Local investment schemes administered out of the the relevant ministry. Hanging baskets and redeveloped traffic systems. An official policy document was released almost thirty-six months after the Prime Minister took office, which saw ongoing initiatives repackaged under the fresh social mobility slogan.

As a result, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went ignored, as well as all the change that it might have driven – in investment, commerce, economic policy, tax and in place-making. Additionally, in schooling, including a higher education sector that has become a target for politicians of all stripes – even though it remains the most powerful engine of upward movement for individuals from less privileged homes, like me, this country has had in recent decades. Maybe the primary source of fair chances, functioning widely.

Why Hope Matters

Hope is essential for our country to succeed. To foster ambition, there needs to be a believable feeling that hard work and results are linked; that if people aim high, they can succeed. For all administrations, being able to create a outlook of positivity about the future is crucial. 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 improving education outcomes – led to youth in those neighborhoods being up to a significant margin more positive about their future than those in similar areas without these schemes in place. The data shows: just making an authentic start on fair opportunity strategies can rapidly and effectively change how people view their destiny.

Lost Potential

Unaware of these findings, and in the midst of its successor selection process, in that period, the Tory administration terminated the programmes. Why should any person in those communities vote for a political group that did that? The opportunity areas policy is one example of what could have been a game-changing Tory policy platform on levelling up, but that possibility was completely wasted. Strategies such as this can generate optimism and ambition. In contrast, as the Conservatives learned, failing to deliver of social mobility is the most expensive error any political party can make. Voters punished the government for its ineffectiveness but, above all, for its unfulfilled commitments on levelling up.

Today’s Political Reality

Now the baton on equal opportunity and equal chances has been transferred to a new administration. The levelling up rhetoric has been discarded. Labour has its own public messaging of “eliminating hurdles to advancement”. The party that is increasingly displacing the failing incumbents, the alternative party, also has its own terminology – “reindustrialisation”. It’s a phrase to talk about new opportunities in communities like the one I come from, in my hometown. It suggests that an industrial past can revive into an modern manufacturing sector.

For the public, it must seem like a Groundhog Day-style loop. Identical problem, new terminology. Yet, currently, little improvement.

What Must Change

Whether the government and opposition want to avoid the similar destiny, each group should take lessons from the previous government’s errors on levelling up; that equal opportunity talk is simple terminology, but actual achievement of more equal results is much harder. Britain’s endemically weak equal opportunity remains the primary challenge for our country, with the next generation unable to get a proper professional launch, those laboring in employment with minimal progress after the rent has been paid, and people across the country without any real hope their offspring will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Elected officials can talk about equal chances however much they like. But where is the political group that has the comprehensive policy agenda on social mobility? I see none. The first to achieve this, prevails. Not only for themselves, but, significantly, for a whole country that has never needed equal access so badly.