🔗 Share this article

While the struggling Conservative party meets in its conference city for its yearly gathering, it has plenty to consider regarding its path forward. It’s not even clear if a clear direction exists at all. These are difficult days for a governing group that now has little, if anything, new or unique to say to the electorate.

An Alternate Reality

Things could have turned out so different if real advances had been made on an priority that resonates with people across the country: Equal opportunity. However Boris Johnson’s government lacked the basic understanding on how to turn the popular slogan on social mobility into concrete action. Over twenty-four months after the 2019 election, it debated what the phrase even meant.

I found it bizarre, because I had previously explained to Johnson what social mobility entailed when we first spoke about it during the contest for party leader. This terminology was language I created and used at the education ministry to talk about social mobility. It was our departmental mantra, and its meaning is unambiguous: social mobility is the means by which we attain equal access – not by taking chances away from those who already have it, but rather by extending chances to those that lack them.

The Core Concept

An additional vital DfE phrase we used, “ability is distributed uniformly across our country, however access isn’t”, represented another a deliberate expression, reflecting the two halves of a equal opportunity plan. First, potential shared equally but not developed consistently through our learning institutions. Furthermore, access not provided uniformly by businesses or our economic system. Thus, learning and employment were crucial to achieving better life chances. This constituted an mission about the community framework of our country – fostering human talent and connecting them to opportunities.

What Levelling Up Became

What did levelling up turn into under the previous government? Local investment schemes overseen from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Hanging baskets and rearranged intersections. A white paper was released nearly three years after Johnson became leader, which saw current strategies repackaged 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, commerce, financial planning, revenue and in local regeneration. Additionally, in learning, including a tertiary education that has become a punchbag for leaders across parties – even though it remains the primary vehicle of social mobility for individuals from less privileged homes, personally, this country has had over the past 30 years. Maybe the only engine of social mobility, functioning widely.

Why Hope Matters

Aspiration is essential for our country to succeed. To foster ambition, there needs to be a credible sense that hard work and results are related; that if people dream big, they can succeed. For all administrations, being able to create a feeling of hope about the tomorrow is crucial. Research by the academic institution at the academic establishment and others, published last month, showed that the DfE’s 12 “opportunity areas” I introduced as education secretary – place-based approaches to enhancing learning results – led to young people in those areas being up to a significant margin more hopeful about their prospects than those in comparable communities without these programmes in place. The data shows: just making an authentic start on equal chance initiatives can quickly and positively change how people perceive their prospects.

Squandered Chances

Oblivious to this, and in the throes of its new leader election, in September 2022, the ruling party closed opportunity areas down. Why would anyone in those regions vote for a political group that made that decision? This specific initiative is one example of what had the potential to be a revolutionary Conservative government agenda on social mobility, but that possibility was totally misused. Methods such as this can create belief and drive. In contrast, as the ruling party discovered, breaking the promise of fair chances is the most expensive error any leadership can make. The electorate punished the administration for its ineffectiveness but, above all, for its failed pledges on social mobility.

The Current Landscape

At present the baton on social mobility and equal chances has been taken up by a Labour government. The previous terminology has been abandoned. The current administration has its own policy language of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The political group that is steadily supplanting the struggling incumbents, the alternative party, also has its own terminology – “economic renewal”. It’s a phrase to talk about additional chances in communities like the one I grew up in, in my hometown. It promises that an industrial past can be reborn into an revitalized economy.

For voters, it must seem like a repetitive cycle. Same issue, alternative phrasing. But – as yet – no results.

What Must Change

Whether the government and opposition want to prevent the identical outcome, both these parties should take lessons from the Conservatives’ failure on social mobility; that social mobility rhetoric is one thing, but actual achievement of improved opportunities is far more challenging. The UK’s endemically weak social mobility remains the primary challenge for our country, with youth unable to get a proper professional launch, those working hard in employment with few results after the rent has been paid, and people across the country without any real hope their offspring will be able to do advance in life than they have.

Politicians can discuss improved access as much as they want. However, which party has the party that has the complete plan on equal opportunity? None appear to exist. Whichever party succeeds initially, wins. Not just for their organization, but, significantly, for a whole country that has urgently needs fair chances so urgently.