🔗 Share this article

As the beleaguered Conservative party meets in its conference city for its yearly gathering, it has much to ponder regarding its next steps. Doubt remains if a viable path is available. These are tough times for a governing group that now has little, if anything, new or unique to say to the public.

An Alternate Reality

Things could have turned out markedly improved if concrete steps had been made on an policy focus that is important for people across the country: Social mobility. However the previous administration did not possess the slightest idea on how to turn his zeitgeisty rhetoric on social mobility into policy reality. During the initial period after the general election, it debated what the concept truly represented.

I was perplexed, because I had clearly defined for the Prime Minister what social mobility meant when we first spoke about it during the contest for party leader. The phrase was a concept I originated and used at the Department for Education to talk about social mobility. It served as our guiding principle, and its purpose is clear: social mobility is the approach by which we attain fair chances – not through reducing opportunity away from those who possess it, but rather by extending options to those that lack them.

Essential Principle

The other key education department term we used, “ability is distributed uniformly throughout the nation, yet chances are not”, again was a deliberate expression, reflecting the dual components of a fairness agenda. To begin with, talent spread evenly but not cultivated evenly through our schools and colleges. Furthermore, access not provided uniformly by employers or our economic system. Therefore, learning and employment were key to achieving stronger social mobility. This constituted an agenda about the societal structure of our country – investing in individual capabilities and linking them with chances.

The Reality of Implementation

How did levelling up turn into under the previous government? A towns fund managed by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Street beautification and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. A government strategy was launched a significant period after Johnson became leader, which saw existing policy approaches repackaged under the new levelling up banner.

Therefore, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went undeveloped, as well as all the reform that it could have inspired – in capital, enterprise, financial planning, tax and in local regeneration. Moreover, in learning, including a higher education sector that has become a punchbag for elected officials – even though it remains the most powerful engine of social mobility for individuals from less privileged homes, like me, this country has had throughout modern times. Possibly the primary source of fair chances, working extensively.

The Role of Ambition

Aspiration is crucial for our country to succeed. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a credible sense that hard work and results are connected; that if people dream big, they can succeed. For political leadership, being able to instil a outlook of positivity about the future is important. Research by the research body at Bath University and others, published last month, showed that the DfE’s 12 “opportunity areas” I established during my tenure – locally targeted strategies to improving education outcomes – led to youth in those communities being up to 18 percentage points more hopeful about their future than those in equivalent locations without these programmes in place. The evidence is clear: just making an sincere effort on fair opportunity strategies can quickly and positively change how people perceive their destiny.

Squandered Chances

Ignoring this evidence, and in the throes of its new leader election, in autumn 2022, the Conservative government ended the initiatives. What reason would someone in those areas vote for a political group that took that action? The opportunity areas policy is a single instance of what might have become a revolutionary Tory policy platform on social mobility, but that possibility was hopelessly squandered. Approaches such as this can inspire hope and aspiration. Conversely, as the Tories learned, reneging on commitments of social mobility is the costliest mistake any leadership can make. The electorate penalized the leadership for its ineffectiveness but, above all, for its failed pledges on levelling up.

The Current Landscape

Currently the responsibility on life chances and equality of opportunity has passed to a Labour government. The previous terminology has been discarded. Labour has its own political rhetoric of “eliminating hurdles to advancement”. The political group that is increasingly displacing the failing incumbents, the challenger, also has its own terminology – “economic renewal”. It’s a phrase to talk about additional chances in areas like the one I grew up in, in my hometown. It claims that an industrial past can revive into an modern manufacturing sector.

For the public, it must feel like a Groundhog Day-style loop. Identical problem, different language. Yet, currently, little improvement.

Lessons for the Future

Whether the government and opposition want to escape the similar destiny, both these parties should take lessons from the Conservatives’ failure on social mobility; that fair chance language is easy to say, but successful delivery of improved opportunities is much harder. Our nation’s chronically poor social mobility remains the primary challenge for our country, with youth unable to get a decent career start, those working hard in employment with little to show after the housing costs are covered, and people across the country without any actual expectation their children will be able to do improve in life than they have.

Elected officials can discuss improved access as much as they want. However, which party has the political group that has the thorough strategy on equal opportunity? I see none. Whoever gets there first, succeeds. Not only for themselves, but, crucially, for a whole country that has urgently needs equality of opportunity so desperately.