🔗 Share this article

As the existentially challenged Tories gathers in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has much to ponder regarding its future direction. Doubt remains if a clear direction remains open. We are in difficult days for a governing group that now has very little, if anything, new or unique to say to the public.

The Missed Opportunity

It could have been so different if concrete steps had been made on an agenda that matters to people nationwide: Social mobility. However Boris Johnson’s government did not possess the first clue on how to turn the trendy talk on social mobility into actual implementation. For the two years after the general election, it discussed what the concept even meant.

I found it bizarre, because I had previously explained to the Prime Minister what social mobility meant when we originally talked about it during his leadership campaign. The expression was a concept I originated and used at the DfE to talk about life chances. It was our core mission, and its meaning is straightforward: social mobility is the approach by which we achieve fair chances – not through reducing opportunity away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by providing options to those that lack them.

Fundamental Idea

Another crucial education department term we used, “talent is spread evenly throughout the nation, however access isn’t”, again was a deliberate expression, embodying the two parts of a social mobility strategy. First, potential shared equally but not cultivated evenly through our schools and colleges. Furthermore, chances not distributed fairly by employers or our market. Therefore, schools and companies were key to achieving better life chances. This represented an agenda about the societal structure of our country – fostering individual capabilities and providing access to prospects.

What Levelling Up Became

How did levelling up turn into under Johnson’s Conservatives? A towns fund managed by the the relevant ministry. Street beautification and redeveloped traffic systems. A government strategy was launched nearly three years after the Prime Minister took office, which saw existing policy approaches relabelled under the new levelling up banner.

As a result, a wider fairness strategy went undeveloped, as well as all the reform that it could have inspired – in investment, commerce, financial planning, revenue and in community development. Additionally, in learning, including a higher education sector that has become a target for elected officials – although it remains the primary vehicle of social mobility for young working-class people, personally, this country has had over the past 30 years. Perhaps the sole mechanism of fair chances, working extensively.

The Role of Ambition

Aspiration is essential for our country to succeed. To foster ambition, there needs to be a realistic expectation that hard work and results are linked; that if people aspire, they can attain. For any government, being able to create a sense of optimism about the years ahead is critical. Analysis by the Institute for Policy Research at the academic establishment and others, recently released, showed that the ministry’s focus zones I established during my tenure – community-focused methods to boosting academic achievement – led to students in those communities being up to nearly one-fifth more optimistic about their prospects than those in comparable communities without these initiatives in place. The evidence is clear: just making an sincere effort on pro-social mobility policy can rapidly and effectively change how people view their prospects.

Squandered Chances

Oblivious to this, and in the midst of its successor selection process, in that period, the Tory administration terminated the programmes. What reason would someone in those regions vote for a party that made that decision? The opportunity areas policy is a single instance of what could have been a revolutionary administration strategy on levelling up, but that possibility was completely wasted. Methods such as this can generate optimism and ambition. On the other hand, as the ruling party found out, breaking the promise of fair chances is the biggest blunder any political party can make. The public held accountable the leadership for its failure but, perhaps most of all, for its unfulfilled commitments on social mobility.

Present Circumstances

At present the responsibility on equal opportunity and equality of opportunity has passed to a new administration. The levelling up rhetoric has been abandoned. Labour has its own public messaging of “removing obstacles to success”. The political group that is gradually replacing the struggling Tories, the alternative party, also has its own language – “economic renewal”. The terminology to talk about fresh prospects in regions like the one I grew up in, in South Yorkshire. It claims that an industrial past can revive into an industrial future.

For the public, it must seem like a Groundhog Day-style loop. Identical problem, alternative phrasing. But – as yet – no results.

The Way Forward

Should the current and alternative parties want to prevent the similar destiny, both these parties should learn from the Conservatives’ failure on levelling up; that social mobility rhetoric is one thing, but effective implementation of fairer outcomes is much harder. Britain’s endemically weak life chances remains the key issue for our country, with young people unable to get a decent career start, those laboring in occupations with minimal progress after the housing costs are covered, and citizens throughout the UK without any genuine belief their children will be able to do advance in life than they have.

Politicians can talk about equal chances as much as they want. But where is the political group that has the complete plan on social mobility? I see none. The first to achieve this, prevails. Not only for their party, but, crucially, for a whole country that has urgently needs equality of opportunity so badly.