As the beleaguered Tories meets in its conference city for its annual party conference, it has plenty to consider regarding its future direction. Doubt remains if a viable path exists at all. We are in tough times for a political party that now has almost nothing, if anything, new or unique to say to voters.
The Missed Opportunity
It could have been vastly better if concrete steps had been made on an policy focus that resonates with people across the country: Levelling up. Yet Boris Johnson’s government hadn’t got the basic understanding on how to convert the popular slogan on social mobility into actual implementation. During the initial period after the 2019 election, it debated what the phrase actually signified.
I found it bizarre, because I had clearly defined for the Prime Minister what levelling up entailed when we initially discussed about it during his leadership campaign. The phrase was a term I developed and used at the DfE to talk about social mobility. It served as our core mission, and its definition is clear: levelling up is the approach by which we attain equal access – not through reducing chances away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by expanding opportunities to those that lack them.
The Core Concept
The other key DfE phrase we used, “ability is distributed uniformly around the UK, yet chances are not”, served as a deliberate expression, representing the dual components of a social mobility strategy. To begin with, potential shared equally but not cultivated evenly through our education system. Additionally, chances not distributed fairly by employers or our market. Thus, learning and employment were essential to achieving improved equality of opportunity. This was an priority about the social fabric of our country – fostering people’s potential and providing access to opportunities.
What Levelling Up Became
How did the social mobility agenda evolve into under the previous government? Regional development money overseen from the DLUHC. Street beautification and redeveloped traffic systems. A white paper was released almost thirty-six months after the Prime Minister took office, which saw existing policy approaches relabelled under the fresh social mobility slogan.
Therefore, a wider fairness strategy went undeveloped, as well as all the improvement that it could have inspired – in capital, commerce, financial planning, revenue and in place-making. Additionally, in learning, including a tertiary education that has become a scapegoat for politicians of all stripes – even though it remains the primary vehicle of upward movement for youth from modest backgrounds, like me, this country has had throughout modern times. Possibly the sole mechanism of fair chances, working extensively.
Why Hope Matters
Aspiration is essential for our country to succeed. To foster ambition, there needs to be a realistic expectation that effort and reward are linked; that if people aspire, they can achieve. For any government, being able to foster a outlook of positivity about the years ahead is crucial. Analysis by the academic institution at the university and others, newly available, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I introduced as education secretary – place-based approaches to enhancing learning results – led to students in those areas being up to 18 percentage points more positive about their prospects than those in equivalent locations without these programmes in place. The data shows: just making an sincere effort on equal chance initiatives can rapidly and effectively change how people feel about their future.
Squandered Chances
Ignoring this evidence, and in the middle of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in autumn 2022, the Tory administration closed opportunity areas down. Why should any person in those areas vote for a organization that took that action? This specific initiative is a single instance of what could have been a revolutionary Tory policy platform on social mobility, but that opportunity was completely wasted. Strategies such as this can create belief and drive. On the other hand, as the Tories found out, failing to deliver of social mobility is the most expensive error any leadership can make. Voters penalized the administration for its ineffectiveness but, above all, for its failed pledges on social mobility.
Today’s Political Reality
At present the mandate on equal opportunity and equal chances has been transferred to a Labour government. The old slogan has been discarded. The current administration has its own political rhetoric of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The organization that is steadily supplanting the failing Conservative party, the challenger, also has its own terminology – “reindustrialisation”. The terminology to talk about fresh prospects in regions like the one I grew up in, in the region. It claims that an industrial past can be reborn into an revitalized economy.
To the electorate, it must seem like a repetitive cycle. Same issue, new terminology. Yet, currently, little improvement.
The Way Forward
Whether the government and opposition want to prevent the similar destiny, both these parties should take lessons from the Tories’ mistakes on social mobility; that equal opportunity talk is easy to say, but successful delivery of more equal results is significantly more difficult. The UK’s persistently low equal opportunity remains the central problem for our country, with the next generation unable to get a good job beginning, those putting in effort in employment with few results after the housing costs are covered, and citizens throughout the UK without any actual expectation their children will be able to do any better in life than they have.
Elected officials can talk about improved access however much they like. But where is the party that has the comprehensive policy agenda on social mobility? None appear to exist. The first to achieve this, prevails. Not just for their party, but, crucially, for a complete society that has desperately requires equal access so urgently.
