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While the struggling Conservative party meets in its conference city for its yearly gathering, it has much to ponder regarding its future direction. Doubt remains if a viable path remains open. We are in difficult days for a political party that now has very little, if anything, new or unique to say to voters.

The Missed Opportunity

It could have been vastly better if tangible progress had been made on an priority that is important for people throughout the UK: Levelling up. But the former leadership did not possess the basic understanding on how to turn the popular slogan on social mobility into concrete action. For the two years after the general election, it debated what the term actually signified.

I found it bizarre, because I had clearly defined for the Prime Minister what levelling up meant when we first spoke about it during his leadership campaign. The expression was language I created and used at the DfE to talk about equal opportunity. It served as our core mission, and its meaning is straightforward: social mobility is the means by which we achieve fair chances – without removing prospects away from those who possess it, but rather by expanding opportunities to those that lack them.

Essential Principle

Another crucial education department term we used, “talent is spread evenly throughout the nation, yet chances are not”, again was a deliberate expression, embodying the two halves of a social mobility strategy. Initially, talent spread evenly but not cultivated evenly through our education system. Second, opportunities not spread evenly by employers or our market. As a result, schools and companies were key to achieving stronger social mobility. This was an agenda about the community framework of our country – fostering human talent and linking them with opportunities.

The Reality of Implementation

What did levelling up turn into under the previous government? Regional development money overseen from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Decorative floral displays and rearranged intersections. A white paper was published a significant period after Johnson became leader, which saw current strategies rebadged under the new levelling up banner.

Consequently, a wider fairness strategy went ignored, as well as all the reform that it might have driven – in capital, enterprise, economic policy, taxation and in place-making. And, of course, in schooling, including a tertiary education that has become a punchbag for politicians of all stripes – even though it remains the strongest driver of life improvement for young working-class people, like me, this country has had throughout modern times. Maybe the primary source of fair chances, working extensively.

Why Hope Matters

Aspiration is crucial for our country to thrive. For hope to exist, there needs to be a credible sense that hard work and results are linked; that if people aspire, they can achieve. For political leadership, being able to instil a feeling of hope about the future is critical. Research by the academic institution at Bath University and others, published last month, showed that the DfE’s 12 “opportunity areas” I introduced as education secretary – place-based approaches to improving education outcomes – led to young people in those communities being up to 18 percentage points more optimistic about their prospects than those in comparable communities without these initiatives in place. The research confirms: just making an sincere effort on equal chance initiatives can swiftly and beneficially change how people feel about their destiny.

Squandered Chances

Oblivious to this, and in the middle of its new leader election, in that period, the ruling party terminated the programmes. Why should any person in those areas vote for a organization that did that? The opportunity areas policy is one example of what might have become a revolutionary Tory policy platform on social mobility, but that chance was totally misused. Approaches such as this can inspire hope and aspiration. In contrast, as the ruling party discovered, breaking the promise of equal opportunity is the most expensive error any leadership can make. The electorate held accountable the government for its incompetence but, perhaps most of all, for its unfulfilled commitments on levelling up.

Today’s Political Reality

Now the mandate on equal opportunity and equal chances has passed to a Labour government. The levelling up rhetoric has been abandoned. The new government has its own public messaging of “removing obstacles to success”. The political group that is increasingly displacing the failing Conservative party, Reform UK, also has its own language – “reindustrialisation”. The terminology to talk about fresh prospects in communities like the one I come from, in my hometown. It promises that an historical manufacturing base can reincarnate into an industrial future.

For the public, it must appear as a repetitive cycle. Similar challenge, alternative phrasing. But – as yet – no results.

Lessons for the Future

Whether the government and opposition want to prevent the same fate, both these parties should understand the previous government’s errors on social mobility; that fair chance language is easy to say, but actual achievement of more equal results is significantly more difficult. The UK’s chronically poor equal opportunity remains the key issue for our country, with young people unable to get a proper professional launch, those laboring in employment with minimal progress after the rent has been paid, and people across the country without any genuine belief their offspring will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Leaders can talk about fairer opportunities however much they like. Yet where is the political group that has the complete plan on life chances? I observe no such party. Whoever gets there first, prevails. Not only for themselves, but, crucially, for a entire nation that has urgently needs equal access so urgently.