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While the beleaguered Tories gathers in Manchester for its annual party conference, it has plenty to consider regarding its future direction. Doubt remains if a road forward exists at all. These are challenging circumstances for a governing group that now has very little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the electorate.

What Could Have Been

It could have been markedly improved if real advances had been made on an policy focus that is important for people nationwide: Equal opportunity. Yet the former leadership hadn’t got the basic understanding on how to convert the popular slogan on levelling up into policy reality. For the two years after the general election, it argued over what the concept even meant.

I was perplexed, because I’d already told the Prime Minister what levelling up signified when we initially discussed about it during his leadership campaign. The phrase was a term I developed and used at the Department for Education to talk about equal opportunity. It served as our guiding principle, and its purpose is straightforward: levelling up is the method by which we realize equality of opportunity – without removing chances away from those who possess it, but rather by extending opportunities to those that lack them.

Essential Principle

Another crucial ministry expression we used, “potential is equally shared around the UK, yet chances are not”, served as a purposeful phrase, embodying the dual components of a equal opportunity plan. First, ability distributed uniformly but not cultivated evenly through our schools and colleges. Second, chances not distributed fairly by businesses or our market. Therefore, schools and companies were key to achieving better life chances. This represented an priority about the societal structure of our country – investing in people’s potential and linking them with prospects.

The Reality of Implementation

How did levelling up become under the Tory administration? Regional development money administered out of the DLUHC. Decorative floral displays and redeveloped traffic systems. A white paper was released almost thirty-six months after the leadership change, which saw current strategies rebadged under the new levelling up banner.

Consequently, a wider fairness strategy went undeveloped, as well as all the change that it might have driven – in investment, commerce, economic policy, tax and in community development. Additionally, in schooling, including a university system that has become a scapegoat for elected officials – even though it remains the strongest driver of life improvement for youth from modest backgrounds, personally, this country has had over the past 30 years. Maybe the only engine of social mobility, functioning widely.

The Role of Ambition

Hope is vital for our country to thrive. To foster ambition, there needs to be a realistic expectation that dedication and outcome are related; that if people aspire, they can succeed. For any government, being able to instil a outlook of positivity about the tomorrow is important. Analysis by the Institute for Policy Research at the university and others, recently released, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I launched while in office – place-based approaches to enhancing learning results – led to youth in those neighborhoods being up to nearly one-fifth more positive about their prospects than those in equivalent locations 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 prospects.

Missed Opportunities

Oblivious to this, and in the middle of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in September 2022, the Tory administration closed opportunity areas down. Why would anyone in those regions vote for a political group that took that action? The opportunity areas policy is a single instance of what could have been a revolutionary administration strategy on levelling up, but that opportunity was totally misused. Methods such as this can inspire hope and aspiration. In contrast, as the ruling party discovered, breaking the promise of social mobility is the most expensive error any government can make. The electorate punished the leadership for its incompetence but, primarily, for its failed pledges on equal opportunity.

The Current Landscape

Currently the mandate on equal opportunity and equal chances has been transferred to a Labour government. The old slogan has been abandoned. Labour has its own policy language of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The political group that is increasingly displacing the failing Tories, the challenger, also has its own terminology – “economic renewal”. This expression to talk about fresh prospects in areas like the one I come from, in South Yorkshire. It suggests that an historical manufacturing base can be reborn into an revitalized economy.

For the public, it must feel like a repetitive cycle. Same issue, alternative phrasing. But – as yet – no results.

Lessons for the Future

If Labour and Reform UK want to escape the similar destiny, each group should understand the Tories’ mistakes on levelling up; that fair chance language is one thing, but successful delivery of more equal results is far more challenging. Britain’s chronically poor social mobility remains the primary challenge for our country, with youth unable to get a good job beginning, those working hard in employment with few results after the housing costs are covered, and people across the country without any actual expectation their children will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Elected officials can discuss equal chances however much they like. However, which party has the political group that has the thorough strategy on social mobility? None appear to exist. The first to achieve this, succeeds. Not just for their party, but, more importantly, for a entire nation that has never needed equality of opportunity so desperately.