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While the beleaguered Tories convenes in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has much to ponder regarding its path forward. It’s not even clear if a road forward is available. These are difficult days for a political party that now has little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the public.

What Could Have Been

It could have been so different if concrete steps had been made on an policy focus that resonates with people throughout the UK: Levelling up. However the former leadership did not possess the basic understanding on how to convert his zeitgeisty rhetoric on levelling up into actual implementation. For the two years after the general election, it debated what the phrase even meant.

I found it bizarre, because I had previously explained to Johnson what social mobility meant when we initially discussed about it during the contest for party leader. This terminology was language I created and used at the Department for Education to talk about equal opportunity. It served as our departmental mantra, and its purpose is straightforward: social mobility is the means by which we achieve equal access – without removing opportunity away from those who possess it, but rather by expanding opportunities to those that are without.

Essential Principle

An additional vital education department term we used, “talent is spread evenly across our country, however access isn’t”, again was a deliberate expression, representing the dual components of a fairness agenda. First, talent spread evenly but not cultivated evenly through our education system. Additionally, chances not distributed fairly by employers or our market. Therefore, learning and employment were key to achieving improved equality of opportunity. This constituted an priority about the social fabric of our country – supporting individual capabilities and connecting them to opportunities.

What Levelling Up Became

What did levelling up evolve into under the Tory administration? Regional development money administered out of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Hanging baskets and rearranged intersections. A white paper was launched nearly three years after the Prime Minister took office, which saw existing policy approaches rebadged under the fresh social mobility slogan.

As a result, a broader social mobility agenda went unpursued, as well as all the reform that it might have driven – in funding, commerce, economic policy, taxation and in place-making. And, of course, in education, including a higher education sector that has become a punchbag for elected officials – even though it remains the most powerful engine of life improvement for young working-class people, including myself, this country has had over the past 30 years. Maybe the sole mechanism of social mobility, functioning widely.

The Importance of Aspiration

Hope is vital for our country to succeed. To foster ambition, there needs to be a believable feeling that dedication and outcome are linked; that if people aspire, they can succeed. For any government, being able to foster a sense of optimism about the tomorrow is important. Studies by the Institute for Policy Research at the university and others, newly available, showed that the DfE’s 12 “opportunity areas” I established during my tenure – place-based approaches to improving education outcomes – led to students in those neighborhoods being up to a significant margin more positive about their prospects than those in similar areas without these schemes in place. The data shows: just making an genuine beginning on pro-social mobility policy can rapidly and effectively change how people feel about their future.

Lost Potential

Unaware of these findings, and in the throes of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in that period, the Tory administration terminated the programmes. Why should any person in those communities vote for a political group that took that action? The opportunity areas policy is a single instance of what could have been a transformative Conservative government agenda on social mobility, but that chance was hopelessly squandered. Strategies such as this can generate optimism and ambition. On the other hand, as the Tories discovered, reneging on commitments of equal opportunity is the most expensive error any government can make. The electorate held accountable the leadership for its incompetence but, above all, for its broken promises on social mobility.

The Current Landscape

Now the responsibility on equal opportunity and fair access has passed to a Labour government. The levelling up rhetoric has been cast off. Labour has its own political rhetoric of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The party that is gradually replacing the hapless incumbents, the challenger, also has its own message – “reindustrialisation”. It’s a phrase to talk about fresh prospects in areas like the one I come from, in the region. It promises that an industrial past can be reborn into an revitalized economy.

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

The Way Forward

Should the current and alternative parties want to prevent the similar destiny, the respective organizations should take lessons from the Conservatives’ failure on levelling up; that social mobility rhetoric is one thing, but successful delivery of improved opportunities is far more challenging. Britain’s chronically poor social mobility remains the central problem for our country, with the next generation unable to get a good job beginning, those laboring in employment with few results after the rent has been paid, and citizens throughout the UK without any actual expectation their next generation will be able to do improve in life than they have.

Politicians can mention equal chances repeatedly. But where is the organization that has the complete plan on equal opportunity? None appear to exist. Whichever party succeeds initially, wins. Not just for their party, but, more importantly, for a complete society that has never needed equality of opportunity so desperately.