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As the struggling Tories convenes in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has plenty to consider regarding its path forward. It’s not even clear 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

It could have been so different if real advances had been made on an agenda that is important for people nationwide: Social mobility. Yet the former leadership lacked the slightest idea on how to convert the trendy talk on social mobility into policy reality. For the two years after the general election, it discussed what the phrase truly represented.

It seemed strange to me, because I had clearly defined for Johnson what social mobility signified when we first spoke about it during his leadership campaign. The expression was a concept I originated and used at the education ministry to talk about equal opportunity. This became our departmental mantra, and its purpose is clear: levelling up is the method by which we achieve equality of opportunity – not by taking prospects away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by extending opportunities to those that lack them.

Essential Principle

An additional vital ministry expression we used, “potential is equally shared throughout the nation, however access isn’t”, represented another a deliberate expression, representing the dual components of a equal opportunity plan. Initially, talent spread evenly but not nurtured uniformly through our education system. Furthermore, opportunities not spread evenly by the private sector or our economy. Therefore, schools and companies were key to achieving better life chances. This constituted an mission about the societal structure of our country – investing in individual capabilities and connecting them to chances.

The Reality of Implementation

What did levelling up evolve into under the Tory administration? Local investment schemes overseen from the the relevant ministry. Street beautification and redeveloped traffic systems. A government strategy was released nearly three years after Johnson became leader, which saw existing policy approaches relabelled under the new levelling up banner.

As a result, a wider fairness strategy went undeveloped, as well as all the change that it could have inspired – in investment, enterprise, economic policy, tax and in place-making. Additionally, in schooling, including a tertiary education that has become a target 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 in recent decades. Maybe the primary source of social mobility, functioning widely.

Why Hope Matters

Aspiration is crucial for our country to prosper. For hope to exist, there needs to be a believable feeling that hard work and results are linked; that if people aspire, they can attain. For political leadership, being able to instil a feeling of hope about the tomorrow is important. Analysis by the academic institution at the university and others, recently released, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I launched while in office – locally targeted strategies to improving education outcomes – led to youth in those neighborhoods being up to a significant margin more optimistic about their prospects than those in comparable communities without these initiatives in place. The research confirms: just making an genuine beginning on fair opportunity strategies can quickly and positively change how people perceive their destiny.

Squandered Chances

Oblivious to this, and in the throes of its successor selection process, in autumn 2022, the Conservative government closed opportunity areas down. Why should any person in those communities vote for a organization that made that decision? The opportunity areas policy is a single instance of what had the potential to be a transformative administration strategy on levelling up, but that opportunity was completely wasted. Methods such as this can generate optimism and ambition. In contrast, as the ruling party learned, reneging on commitments of equal opportunity is the costliest mistake any leadership can make. The electorate held accountable the leadership for its ineffectiveness but, primarily, for its broken promises on levelling up.

The Current Landscape

Currently the responsibility on life chances and equal chances has been taken up by a Labour government. The previous terminology has been cast off. The new government has its own policy language of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The political group that is increasingly displacing the hapless incumbents, the alternative party, also has its own terminology – “economic renewal”. The terminology to talk about fresh prospects in regions like the one I grew up in, in the region. It suggests that an industrial past can revive into an industrial future.

For the public, it must appear as a repetitive cycle. Identical problem, different language. Yet, currently, little improvement.

What Must Change

If Labour and Reform UK want to prevent the similar destiny, both these parties should learn from the Tories’ mistakes on levelling up; that social mobility rhetoric is easy to say, but effective implementation of more equal results is far more challenging. The UK’s chronically poor life chances remains the key issue for our country, with young people unable to get a decent career start, those putting in effort in occupations with little to show after the living expenses are met, and citizens throughout the UK without any genuine belief their offspring will be able to do advance in life than they have.

Politicians can talk about equal chances repeatedly. Yet where is the party that has the complete plan on life chances? I see none. The first to achieve this, prevails. Not only for their organization, but, crucially, for a whole country that has never needed equality of opportunity so badly.