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While the beleaguered Conservative party gathers in Manchester for its annual party conference, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its next steps. Doubt remains if a road forward remains open. These are tough times for a political party that now has little, if anything, new or unique to say to voters.

What Could Have Been

The situation might have been so different if tangible progress had been made on an priority that is important for people across the country: Equal opportunity. However the previous administration lacked the slightest idea on how to turn the trendy talk on social mobility into actual implementation. During the initial period after the general election, it discussed what the concept actually signified.

I was perplexed, because I had previously explained to the Prime Minister what social mobility entailed when we initially discussed about it during the contest for party leader. The expression was language I created and used at the education ministry to talk about equal opportunity. It was our departmental mantra, and its definition is unambiguous: levelling up is the method by which we realize equal access – not through reducing opportunity away from those who already have it, but rather by providing chances to those that are without.

Essential Principle

An additional vital ministry expression we used, “ability is distributed uniformly throughout the nation, but opportunity is not”, represented another a purposeful phrase, reflecting the two parts of a fairness agenda. To begin with, potential shared equally but not cultivated evenly through our education system. Second, opportunities not spread evenly by businesses or our economy. Thus, education and business were key to achieving better life chances. This represented an priority about the societal structure of our country – investing in individual capabilities and providing access to chances.

The Actual Outcome

What did levelling up become under the Tory administration? Local investment schemes administered out of the DLUHC. Hanging baskets and rearranged intersections. A government strategy was launched a significant period after the Prime Minister took office, which saw existing policy approaches repackaged under the fresh social mobility slogan.

As a result, a wider fairness strategy went undeveloped, as well as all the change that it may have generated – in investment, enterprise, financial planning, tax and in place-making. And, of course, in learning, including a tertiary education that has become a punchbag for elected officials – although it remains the primary vehicle of life improvement for youth from modest backgrounds, like me, this country has had in recent decades. Maybe the primary source of equal opportunity, functioning widely.

The Role of Ambition

Aspiration is essential for our country to succeed. To foster ambition, there needs to be a believable feeling that effort and reward are linked; that if people dream big, they can succeed. For any government, being able to create a outlook of positivity about the tomorrow is important. Analysis by the academic institution at the academic establishment and others, published last month, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I established during my tenure – locally targeted strategies to enhancing learning results – led to students in those communities being up to a significant margin more optimistic about their future than those in comparable communities without these schemes in place. The data shows: just making an genuine beginning on pro-social mobility policy can swiftly and beneficially change how people view their prospects.

Squandered Chances

Oblivious to this, and in the middle of its successor selection process, in that period, the ruling party terminated the programmes. Why should any person in those communities vote for a political group that took that action? The targeted programme is a single instance of what might have become a game-changing Tory policy platform on levelling up, but that opportunity was totally misused. Strategies such as this can create belief and drive. In contrast, as the Tories found out, failing to deliver of fair chances is the most expensive error any government can make. The public penalized the administration for its failure but, above all, for its failed pledges on equal opportunity.

Today’s Political Reality

Now the mandate on life chances and equal chances has been taken up by a Labour government. The old slogan has been abandoned. Labour has its own political rhetoric of “eliminating hurdles to advancement”. The party that is gradually replacing the struggling incumbents, Reform UK, also has its own message – “economic renewal”. The terminology to talk about fresh prospects in areas like the one I come from, in South Yorkshire. It claims that an historical manufacturing base can revive into an industrial future.

For the public, it must appear as a Groundhog Day-style loop. Identical problem, different language. However, so far, no progress.

Lessons for the Future

If Labour and Reform UK want to prevent the same fate, the respective organizations should understand the Tories’ mistakes on social mobility; that social mobility rhetoric is one thing, but effective implementation of fairer outcomes is significantly more difficult. Our nation’s chronically poor life chances remains the primary challenge for our country, with youth unable to get a proper professional launch, those putting in effort in full-time jobs with few results after the housing costs are covered, and citizens throughout the UK without any real hope their children will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Elected officials can discuss fairer opportunities as much as they want. Yet where is the organization that has the comprehensive policy agenda on equal opportunity? I observe no such party. Whoever gets there first, prevails. Not only for themselves, but, more importantly, for a whole country that has never needed fair chances so urgently.