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While the struggling Conservative party convenes in its conference city for its annual party conference, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its next steps. It’s not even clear if a road forward exists at all. These are difficult days for a governing group that now has very little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to voters.

What Could Have Been

It could have been vastly better if real advances had been made on an priority that is important for people across the country: Equal opportunity. However the previous administration hadn’t got the slightest idea on how to turn the popular slogan on levelling up into actual implementation. During the initial period after the 2019 election, it argued over what the phrase even meant.

I was perplexed, because I had previously explained to the Prime Minister what levelling up meant when we initially discussed about it during his leadership campaign. This terminology was a term I developed and used at the Department for Education to talk about life chances. It was our departmental mantra, and its purpose is unambiguous: social mobility is the means by which we realize equal access – without removing opportunity away from those who already have it, but rather by expanding options to those that are without.

Fundamental Idea

An additional vital education department term we used, “talent is spread evenly around the UK, but opportunity is not”, represented another a purposeful phrase, reflecting the dual components of a social mobility strategy. First, potential shared equally but not cultivated evenly through our schools and colleges. Second, access not provided uniformly by employers or our economic system. Thus, education and business were essential to achieving improved equality of opportunity. 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 levelling up evolve into under the previous government? Regional development money administered out of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Decorative floral displays and redeveloped traffic systems. An official policy document was published nearly three years after the leadership change, which saw current strategies repackaged under the new levelling up banner.

Therefore, a wider fairness strategy went undeveloped, as well as all the improvement that it might have driven – in investment, business, financial planning, revenue and in place-making. Moreover, in learning, including a university system that has become a target for elected officials – even though it remains the most powerful engine of upward movement for individuals from less privileged homes, personally, this country has had throughout modern times. Maybe the only engine of social mobility, operating at scale.

The Role of Ambition

Ambition is crucial for our country to thrive. For hope to exist, there needs to be a credible sense that dedication and outcome are related; that if people aspire, they can succeed. For political leadership, being able to instil a outlook of positivity about the tomorrow is crucial. Research by the academic institution at the academic establishment and others, newly available, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I introduced as education secretary – locally targeted strategies 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 similar areas without these schemes in place. The evidence is clear: just making an authentic start on fair opportunity strategies can swiftly and beneficially change how people view their future.

Lost Potential

Oblivious to this, and in the midst of its new leader election, in that period, the ruling party ended the initiatives. What reason would someone in those communities vote for a political group that did that? The opportunity areas policy is a clear case of what had the potential to be a revolutionary Tory policy platform on levelling up, but that opportunity was totally misused. Approaches such as this can create belief and drive. In contrast, as the ruling party found out, breaking the promise of social mobility is the most expensive error any leadership can make. Voters held accountable the government for its ineffectiveness but, perhaps most of all, for its unfulfilled commitments on equal opportunity.

The Current Landscape

Currently the mandate on equal opportunity and equality of opportunity has passed to a Labour government. The old slogan has been abandoned. Labour has its own political rhetoric of “eliminating hurdles to advancement”. The organization that is steadily supplanting the hapless incumbents, the alternative party, also has its own terminology – “industrial revival”. This expression to talk about new opportunities in areas like the one I grew up in, in South Yorkshire. It claims that an industrial past can revive into an modern manufacturing sector.

For the public, it must feel like a repetitive cycle. Same issue, alternative phrasing. However, so far, no progress.

The Way Forward

Should the current and alternative parties want to avoid the identical outcome, the respective organizations should learn from the previous government’s errors on levelling up; that equal opportunity talk is easy to say, but actual achievement of improved opportunities is significantly more difficult. Britain’s endemically weak social mobility remains the key issue for our country, with youth unable to get a good job beginning, those putting in effort in occupations with minimal progress after the living expenses are met, and people across the country without any genuine belief their next generation will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Leaders can mention equal chances however much they like. But where is the organization that has the complete plan on life chances? None appear to exist. Whichever party succeeds initially, prevails. Not only for their organization, but, crucially, for a complete society that has urgently needs fair chances so badly.