🔗 Share this article As the original author preached social mobility as the key to Conservative success – but the former Prime Minister didn’t do it. See the current state. While the struggling Tories gathers in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its future direction. Doubt remains if a clear direction remains open. We are in challenging circumstances for a political party that now has almost nothing, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to voters. What Could Have Been The situation might have been markedly improved if real advances had been made on an agenda that is important for people across the country: Equal opportunity. Yet the former leadership did not possess the first clue on how to turn his zeitgeisty rhetoric on social mobility into actual implementation. For the two years after the 2019 election, it argued over what the phrase truly represented. I found it bizarre, because I had previously explained to Johnson what social mobility signified when we initially discussed about it during the contest for party leader. This terminology was a term I developed and used at the Department for Education to talk about equal opportunity. It served as our guiding principle, and its definition is straightforward: social mobility is the approach by which we achieve fair chances – not through reducing chances away from those who possess it, but rather by providing chances to those that are without. Essential Principle Another crucial ministry expression we used, “ability is distributed uniformly across our country, however access isn’t”, again was a deliberate expression, reflecting the dual components of a fairness agenda. First, potential shared equally but not developed consistently through our schools and colleges. Furthermore, access not provided uniformly by businesses or our market. Therefore, education and business were essential to achieving better life chances. This constituted an agenda about the social fabric of our country – investing in individual capabilities and connecting them to chances. The Reality of Implementation What did the social mobility agenda evolve into under the Tory administration? Local investment schemes managed by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Hanging baskets and redeveloped traffic systems. A government strategy was launched a significant period after Johnson became leader, which saw existing policy approaches relabelled under the recently branded agenda. Therefore, a broader social mobility agenda went undeveloped, as well as all the change that it could have inspired – in capital, commerce, fiscal strategy, revenue and in community development. Moreover, in education, including a tertiary education that has become a punchbag for leaders across parties – despite the fact that it remains the primary vehicle of social mobility for young working-class people, personally, this country has had in recent decades. Perhaps the only engine of fair chances, operating at scale. The Importance of Aspiration Ambition is crucial for our country to succeed. For hope to exist, there needs to be a believable feeling that dedication and outcome are connected; that if people aspire, they can succeed. For any government, being able to instil a sense of optimism about the tomorrow is crucial. Studies by the research body at the university and others, published last month, showed that the DfE’s 12 “opportunity areas” I established during my tenure – place-based approaches to improving education outcomes – led to students in those communities being up to 18 percentage points more optimistic about their future than those in comparable communities without these programmes in place. The research confirms: just making an sincere effort on equal chance initiatives can quickly and positively change how people feel about their future. Lost Potential Ignoring this evidence, and in the midst of its successor selection process, in that period, the ruling party terminated the programmes. Why would anyone in those communities vote for a organization that took that action? The opportunity areas policy is a clear case of what might have become a transformative Tory policy platform on levelling up, but that opportunity was totally misused. Methods such as this can inspire hope and aspiration. Conversely, as the ruling party discovered, reneging on commitments of fair chances is the most expensive error any political party can make. Voters punished the leadership for its ineffectiveness but, above all, for its broken promises on levelling up. Today’s Political Reality At present the mandate on equal opportunity and equal chances has been taken up by a new administration. The levelling up rhetoric has been abandoned. The new government has its own political rhetoric of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The organization that is steadily supplanting the hapless Tories, the alternative party, also has its own language – “economic renewal”. This expression to talk about additional chances in regions like the one I grew up in, in my hometown. It claims that an former economic strength can reincarnate into an revitalized economy. For voters, it must feel like a déjà vu experience. Same issue, different language. However, so far, no progress. The Way Forward Should the current and alternative parties want to prevent the similar destiny, each group should learn from the Tories’ mistakes on levelling up; that fair chance language is easy to say, but effective implementation of improved opportunities is much harder. Britain’s persistently low life chances remains the key issue for our country, with the next generation unable to get a decent career start, those putting in effort in full-time jobs with minimal progress after the living expenses are met, and citizens throughout the UK without any real hope their offspring will be able to do improve in life than they have. Politicians can talk about improved access however much they like. Yet where is the political group that has the complete plan on life chances? I observe no such party. The first to achieve this, succeeds. Not only for themselves, but, crucially, for a complete society that has urgently needs equality of opportunity so desperately.