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As the beleaguered Tories convenes in its conference city for its annual party conference, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its path forward. There is uncertainty if a viable path is available. We are in difficult days for a governing group that now has almost nothing, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to voters.

The Missed Opportunity

It could have been so different if real advances had been made on an agenda that resonates with people throughout the UK: Social mobility. However the former leadership hadn’t got 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 discussed what the phrase actually signified.

It seemed strange to me, because I’d already told Johnson what social mobility signified when we originally talked about it during his leadership campaign. This terminology was a concept I originated and used at the Department for Education to talk about life chances. It was our guiding principle, and its purpose is unambiguous: social mobility is the approach by which we attain fair chances – without removing prospects away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by expanding opportunities to those that are without.

Fundamental Idea

An additional vital DfE phrase we used, “potential is equally shared across our country, but opportunity is not”, served as a deliberate expression, reflecting the two halves of a fairness agenda. First, ability distributed uniformly but not nurtured uniformly through our education system. Furthermore, chances not distributed fairly by employers or our market. Therefore, education and business were key to achieving better life chances. This represented an agenda about the social fabric of our country – investing in individual capabilities and providing access to prospects.

The Reality of Implementation

How did the social mobility agenda turn into under the Tory administration? Local investment schemes administered out of the the relevant ministry. Hanging baskets and reconfigured roundabouts and roads. A white paper was published a significant period after the leadership change, which saw current strategies relabelled under the fresh social mobility slogan.

As a result, a broader social mobility agenda went unpursued, as well as all the reform that it may have generated – in capital, enterprise, fiscal strategy, tax and in place-making. Additionally, in education, including a tertiary education that has become a punchbag for leaders across parties – despite the fact that it remains the strongest driver of upward movement for youth from modest backgrounds, including myself, this country has had in recent decades. Maybe the sole mechanism of equal opportunity, working extensively.

The Importance of Aspiration

Ambition is vital for our country to succeed. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a realistic expectation that dedication and outcome are linked; that if people aim high, they can attain. For all administrations, being able to instil a feeling of hope about the tomorrow is crucial. Analysis by the Institute for Policy Research at Bath University and others, recently released, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I established during my tenure – community-focused methods to boosting academic achievement – led to youth in those neighborhoods being up to nearly one-fifth more positive about their prospects than those in equivalent locations without these schemes in place. The data shows: just making an authentic start on fair opportunity strategies can quickly and positively change how people view their destiny.

Lost Potential

Oblivious to this, and in the midst of its new leader election, in that period, the ruling party terminated the programmes. Why should any person in those communities vote for a party that did that? The opportunity areas policy is a clear case of what could have been a transformative administration strategy on social mobility, but that opportunity was totally misused. Methods such as this can create belief and drive. On the other hand, as the Tories discovered, reneging on commitments of equal opportunity is the biggest blunder any government can make. The public penalized the administration for its ineffectiveness but, perhaps most of all, for its failed pledges on levelling up.

The Current Landscape

Now the responsibility on life chances and fair access has been taken up by a opposition party. The levelling up rhetoric has been discarded. The new government has its own public messaging of “removing obstacles to success”. The organization that is gradually replacing the hapless Conservative party, Reform UK, also has its own terminology – “economic renewal”. This expression to talk about fresh prospects in areas like the one I come from, in my hometown. It promises that an historical manufacturing base can be reborn into an revitalized economy.

For the public, it must feel like a Groundhog Day-style loop. Similar challenge, new terminology. Yet, currently, little improvement.

The Way Forward

Whether the government and opposition want to prevent the similar destiny, each group should learn from the previous government’s errors on levelling up; that fair chance language is simple terminology, but effective implementation of fairer outcomes is far more challenging. Our nation’s endemically weak social mobility remains the key issue 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 people across the country without any real hope their offspring will be able to do advance in life than they have.

Politicians can talk about equal chances as much as they want. Yet where is the political group that has the comprehensive policy agenda on social mobility? I observe no such party. The first to achieve this, prevails. Not just for their party, but, crucially, for a entire nation that has urgently needs fair chances so desperately.