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While the struggling Conservative party convenes in its conference city for its annual party conference, it has plenty to consider regarding its path forward. It’s not even clear if a viable path exists at all. These are challenging circumstances for a governing group that now has almost nothing, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the electorate.

An Alternate Reality

It could have been markedly improved if real advances had been made on an agenda that resonates with people across the country: Levelling up. But Boris Johnson’s government lacked the basic understanding on how to transform the trendy talk on levelling up into policy reality. During the initial period after the 2019 election, it debated what the term actually signified.

I found it bizarre, because I had previously explained to the Prime Minister what levelling up meant when we first spoke about it during the contest for party leader. The phrase was a concept I originated and used at the Department for Education to talk about social mobility. This became our core mission, and its purpose is straightforward: levelling up is the approach by which we achieve equality of opportunity – without removing opportunity away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by extending opportunities to those that lack them.

Fundamental Idea

The other key ministry expression we used, “ability is distributed uniformly across our country, however access isn’t”, again was a deliberate expression, embodying the two parts of a social mobility strategy. First, talent spread evenly but not developed consistently through our education system. Furthermore, access not provided uniformly by the private sector or our economic system. As a result, learning and employment were crucial to achieving improved equality of opportunity. This represented an mission about the community framework of our country – investing in human talent and providing access to opportunities.

What Levelling Up Became

What did levelling up evolve into under the Tory administration? A towns fund overseen from the DLUHC. Street beautification and rearranged intersections. A white paper was launched nearly three years after the Prime Minister took office, which saw existing policy approaches repackaged under the recently branded agenda.

Therefore, a comprehensive equal opportunity plan went undeveloped, as well as all the change that it might have driven – in funding, commerce, fiscal strategy, revenue and in local regeneration. Moreover, in education, including a tertiary education that has become a punchbag for politicians of all stripes – despite the fact that it remains the strongest driver of upward movement for individuals from less privileged homes, personally, this country has had in recent decades. Maybe the sole mechanism of fair chances, functioning widely.

The Importance of Aspiration

Ambition is crucial for our country to prosper. To foster ambition, there needs to be a credible sense that effort and reward are related; that if people aim high, they can attain. For all administrations, being able to foster a outlook of positivity about the years ahead is important. Studies by the research body at the university and others, recently released, showed that the DfE’s 12 “opportunity areas” I introduced as education secretary – place-based approaches to enhancing learning results – led to young people in those neighborhoods being up to a significant margin more positive about their life ahead than those in equivalent locations without these programmes in place. The data shows: just making an authentic start on pro-social mobility policy can quickly and positively change how people perceive their destiny.

Missed Opportunities

Ignoring this evidence, and in the midst of its new leader election, in autumn 2022, the Conservative government ended the initiatives. Why would anyone in those regions vote for a political group that took that action? This specific initiative is a clear case of what might have become a game-changing Conservative government agenda on levelling up, but that chance was completely wasted. Strategies such as this can generate optimism and ambition. Conversely, as the Conservatives found out, breaking the promise of social mobility is the most expensive error any political party can make. Voters punished the leadership for its ineffectiveness but, above all, for its broken promises on equal opportunity.

Present Circumstances

Now the baton on social mobility and equal chances has been taken up by a opposition party. The previous terminology has been cast off. The current administration has its own public messaging of “breaking down the barriers to opportunity”. The organization that is gradually replacing the struggling incumbents, the alternative party, also has its own message – “reindustrialisation”. It’s a phrase to talk about new opportunities in regions 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 appear as a déjà vu experience. Same issue, new terminology. But – as yet – no results.

What Must Change

If Labour and Reform UK want to avoid the identical outcome, both these parties should understand the Tories’ mistakes on levelling up; that equal opportunity talk is one thing, but effective implementation of more equal results is far more challenging. The UK’s persistently low life chances remains the primary challenge for our country, with the next generation unable to get a decent career start, those working hard in employment with minimal progress after the housing costs are covered, and individuals nationwide without any genuine belief their children will be able to do advance in life than they have.

Leaders can discuss fairer opportunities repeatedly. But where is the political group that has the complete plan on equal opportunity? None appear to exist. Whichever party succeeds initially, prevails. Not only for themselves, but, significantly, for a entire nation that has urgently needs equality of opportunity so desperately.