🔗 Share this article

While the struggling Tories convenes in its conference city for its annual party conference, it has plenty to consider regarding its next steps. It’s not even clear if a road forward remains open. These are tough times for a governing group that now has very little, if anything, new or unique to say to the public.

An Alternate Reality

It could have been markedly improved if concrete steps had been made on an policy focus that is important for people across the country: Equal opportunity. But Boris Johnson’s government hadn’t got the slightest idea on how to transform the trendy talk on social mobility into policy reality. Over twenty-four months after the 2019 election, it debated what the term even meant.

I found it bizarre, because I had previously explained to Johnson what levelling up entailed when we originally talked about it during the contest for party leader. The expression was a concept I originated and used at the Department for Education to talk about social mobility. It served as our departmental mantra, and its meaning is clear: levelling up is the means by which we attain equality of opportunity – not through reducing chances away from those who possess it, but rather by extending opportunities to those that lack them.

Fundamental Idea

The other key DfE phrase we used, “ability is distributed uniformly throughout the nation, however access isn’t”, again was a intentional wording, representing the two parts of a fairness agenda. First, talent spread evenly but not developed consistently through our schools and colleges. Additionally, access not provided uniformly by the private sector or our market. Thus, learning and employment were essential to achieving better life chances. This was an agenda about the community framework of our country – fostering individual capabilities and connecting them to opportunities.

The Reality of Implementation

How did the social mobility agenda become under the previous government? Local investment schemes administered out of the DLUHC. Decorative floral displays and rearranged intersections. A white paper was released nearly three years after Johnson became leader, which saw current strategies relabelled under the fresh social mobility slogan.

Consequently, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went unpursued, as well as all the reform that it could have inspired – in investment, business, fiscal strategy, tax and in local regeneration. And, of course, in schooling, including a university system that has become a punchbag for leaders across parties – despite the fact that it remains the strongest driver of social mobility for youth from modest backgrounds, like me, this country has had in recent decades. Perhaps the primary source of fair chances, operating at scale.

Why Hope Matters

Hope is vital for our country to thrive. For hope to exist, there needs to be a believable feeling that dedication and outcome are connected; that if people aim high, they can achieve. For all administrations, being able to foster a feeling of hope about the tomorrow is crucial. Research by the research body at the university and others, newly available, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I launched while in office – community-focused methods to enhancing learning results – led to youth in those communities being up to 18 percentage points more optimistic about their life ahead than those in similar areas without these schemes in place. The research confirms: just making an sincere effort on pro-social mobility policy can rapidly and effectively change how people perceive their future.

Missed Opportunities

Oblivious to this, and in the throes of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in September 2022, the ruling party terminated the programmes. Why should any person in those communities vote for a organization that did that? The opportunity areas policy is a clear case of what might have become a revolutionary Tory policy platform on social mobility, but that possibility was totally misused. Approaches such as this can generate optimism and ambition. On the other hand, as the ruling party discovered, breaking the promise of equal opportunity is the most expensive error any political party can make. The public penalized the government for its incompetence but, perhaps most of all, for its failed pledges on social mobility.

The Current Landscape

Currently the mandate on social mobility and equal chances has been transferred to a new administration. The previous terminology has been discarded. The current administration has its own public messaging of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The political group that is increasingly displacing the struggling incumbents, the alternative party, also has its own message – “reindustrialisation”. The terminology to talk about new opportunities in regions like the one I was raised in, in my hometown. It promises that an historical manufacturing base can be reborn into an industrial future.

To the electorate, it must feel like a repetitive cycle. Similar challenge, alternative phrasing. Yet, currently, little improvement.

What Must Change

If Labour and Reform UK want to prevent the identical outcome, the respective organizations should learn from the previous government’s errors on levelling up; that social mobility rhetoric is simple terminology, but actual achievement of fairer outcomes is far more challenging. Britain’s persistently low equal opportunity remains the primary challenge for our country, with youth unable to get a good job beginning, those working hard in occupations with few results after the living expenses are met, and individuals nationwide without any genuine belief their offspring 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 organization that has the thorough strategy on social mobility? I observe no such party. The first to achieve this, prevails. Not just for their organization, but, more importantly, for a complete society that has never needed equality of opportunity so urgently.