While the struggling Tories meets in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has a lot to reflect on regarding its path forward. There is uncertainty if a clear direction is available. We are in challenging circumstances for a political party that now has very little, if anything, new or unique to say to voters.
What Could Have Been
Things could have turned out so different if real advances had been made on an agenda that resonates with people across the country: Social mobility. But Boris Johnson’s government did not possess the slightest idea on how to transform the trendy talk on social mobility into concrete action. For the two years after the 2019 election, it discussed what the phrase actually signified.
It seemed strange to me, because I had previously explained to the Prime Minister what levelling up meant when we first spoke 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. This became our core mission, and its meaning is straightforward: social mobility is the method by which we attain equality of opportunity – without removing chances away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by extending opportunities to those that lack them.
Essential Principle
An additional vital ministry expression we used, “talent is spread evenly around the UK, yet chances are not”, served as a deliberate expression, representing the two parts of a social mobility strategy. Initially, potential shared equally but not cultivated evenly through our education system. Furthermore, opportunities not spread evenly by employers or our economy. Therefore, education and business were crucial to achieving better life chances. This constituted an agenda about the social fabric of our country – investing in human talent and providing access to prospects.
What Levelling Up Became
What did the social mobility agenda evolve into under the previous government? A towns fund overseen from the DLUHC. Hanging baskets and rearranged intersections. A government strategy was published nearly three years after the Prime Minister took office, which saw existing policy approaches relabelled under the recently branded agenda.
Therefore, a wider fairness strategy went ignored, as well as all the change that it might have driven – in capital, business, economic policy, tax and in local regeneration. And, of course, in learning, including a tertiary education that has become a target for elected officials – although it remains the strongest driver of life improvement for youth from modest backgrounds, including myself, this country has had throughout modern times. Maybe the primary source of fair chances, functioning widely.
The Importance of Aspiration
Ambition is essential for our country to prosper. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a realistic expectation that effort and reward are related; that if people aspire, they can attain. For political leadership, being able to instil a outlook of positivity about the years ahead is crucial. Analysis by the Institute for Policy Research at the university and others, recently released, showed that the DfE’s 12 “opportunity areas” I established during my tenure – community-focused methods to improving education outcomes – led to youth in those neighborhoods being up to nearly one-fifth more optimistic about their prospects than those in similar areas without these programmes in place. The data shows: just making an authentic start on equal chance initiatives can swiftly and beneficially change how people feel about their future.
Missed Opportunities
Unaware of these findings, and in the throes of its new leader election, in September 2022, the Conservative government closed opportunity areas down. Why would anyone in those regions vote for a organization that made that decision? The targeted programme is a clear case of what might have become a game-changing administration strategy on social mobility, but that possibility was totally misused. Strategies such as this can generate optimism and ambition. On the other hand, as the Conservatives found out, breaking the promise of equal opportunity is the costliest mistake any leadership can make. The public penalized the administration for its failure but, primarily, for its unfulfilled commitments on social mobility.
The Current Landscape
Currently the responsibility on equal opportunity and fair access has been transferred to a opposition party. The previous terminology has been cast off. The current administration has its own political rhetoric of “removing obstacles to success”. The organization that is steadily supplanting the struggling incumbents, the alternative party, also has its own terminology – “industrial revival”. The terminology to talk about fresh prospects in regions like the one I was raised in, in the region. It suggests that an historical manufacturing base can be reborn into an modern manufacturing sector.
For the public, it must feel like a repetitive cycle. Similar challenge, alternative phrasing. However, so far, no progress.
The Way Forward
If Labour and Reform UK want to prevent the similar destiny, both these parties should understand the previous government’s errors on social mobility; that equal opportunity talk is easy to say, but effective implementation of improved opportunities is significantly more difficult. Our nation’s chronically poor social mobility remains the key issue for our country, with young people unable to get a good job beginning, those working hard in full-time jobs with few results after the rent has been paid, and citizens throughout the UK without any genuine belief their children will be able to do advance in life than they have.
Elected officials can discuss improved access however much they like. Yet where is the political group that has the thorough strategy on social mobility? None appear to exist. Whoever gets there first, succeeds. Not only for their party, but, more importantly, for a entire nation that has urgently needs fair chances so badly.
