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As the struggling Conservative party meets in Manchester for its annual party conference, it has much to ponder regarding its path forward. It’s not even clear if a road forward exists at all. We are in difficult days for a governing group that now has little, if anything, new or unique to say to the electorate.

The Missed Opportunity

The situation might have been so different if real advances had been made on an policy focus that matters to people across the country: Levelling up. Yet Boris Johnson’s government did not possess the basic understanding on how to turn his zeitgeisty rhetoric on levelling up into policy reality. Over twenty-four months after the general election, it argued over what the concept truly represented.

It seemed strange to me, because I’d already told Johnson what social mobility meant when we first spoke about it during his leadership campaign. The phrase was a term I developed and used at the DfE to talk about life chances. This became our guiding principle, and its purpose is clear: levelling up is the approach by which we achieve equality of opportunity – without removing opportunity away from those who possess it, but rather by extending opportunities to those that are without.

Fundamental Idea

An additional vital DfE phrase we used, “talent is spread evenly throughout the nation, however access isn’t”, served as a purposeful phrase, reflecting the dual components of a social mobility strategy. To begin with, talent spread evenly but not nurtured uniformly through our education system. Additionally, opportunities not spread evenly by businesses or our economy. Thus, schools and companies were crucial to achieving improved equality of opportunity. This constituted an mission about the societal structure of our country – supporting people’s potential and connecting them to chances.

The Reality of Implementation

What did levelling up evolve into under the Tory administration? Regional development money administered out of the the relevant ministry. Hanging baskets and rearranged intersections. An official policy document was released a significant period after the leadership change, which saw existing policy approaches repackaged under the new levelling up banner.

Therefore, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went unpursued, as well as all the change that it might have driven – in capital, business, fiscal strategy, revenue and in place-making. And, of course, in education, including a higher education sector that has become a punchbag for leaders across parties – even though it remains the most powerful engine of social mobility for youth from modest backgrounds, personally, this country has had in recent decades. Possibly the primary source of social mobility, functioning widely.

Why Hope Matters

Aspiration is essential for our country to prosper. For hope to exist, there needs to be a realistic expectation that hard work and results are related; that if people aim high, they can achieve. For political leadership, being able to instil a feeling of hope about the future is important. Research by the research body at the university and others, recently released, showed that the ministry’s focus zones I introduced as education secretary – locally targeted strategies to enhancing learning results – led to young people in those communities being up to nearly one-fifth more positive about their future than those in similar areas without these schemes in place. The evidence is clear: just making an genuine beginning on equal chance initiatives can quickly and positively change how people feel about their prospects.

Squandered Chances

Unaware of these findings, and in the midst of its post-Johnson leadership contest, in that period, the Conservative government ended the initiatives. Why should any person in those regions vote for a organization that did that? The targeted programme is a clear case of what might have become a transformative Conservative government agenda on levelling up, but that possibility was hopelessly squandered. Strategies such as this can generate optimism and ambition. In contrast, as the Tories learned, reneging on commitments of fair chances is the biggest blunder any political party can make. Voters held accountable the leadership for its failure but, above all, for its broken promises on social mobility.

The Current Landscape

At present the mandate on equal opportunity and fair access has passed to a opposition party. The previous terminology has been cast off. Labour has its own political rhetoric of “eliminating hurdles to advancement”. The party that is increasingly displacing the struggling Conservative party, the challenger, also has its own message – “industrial revival”. It’s a phrase to talk about new opportunities in regions like the one I come from, in the region. It claims that an industrial past can be reborn into an industrial future.

For the public, it must seem like a Groundhog Day-style loop. Same issue, alternative phrasing. Yet, currently, little improvement.

The Way Forward

Should the current and alternative parties want to prevent the same fate, both these parties should take lessons from the previous government’s errors on levelling up; that fair chance language is simple terminology, but effective implementation of more equal results is significantly more difficult. The UK’s chronically poor equal opportunity remains the key issue for our country, with young people unable to get a decent career start, those putting in effort in full-time jobs with little to show after the housing costs are covered, and citizens throughout the UK without any real hope their next generation will be able to do any better in life than they have.

Politicians can discuss equal chances as much as they want. However, which party has the organization that has the comprehensive policy agenda on equal opportunity? I see none. Whoever gets there first, wins. Not just for their organization, but, significantly, for a complete society that has never needed equal access so urgently.