As the existentially challenged Conservative party meets in Manchester for its annual party conference, it has plenty to consider regarding its next steps. There is uncertainty if a road forward is available. These are tough times for a governing group that now has almost nothing, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the public.
An Alternate Reality
Things could have turned out vastly better if tangible progress had been made on an agenda that is important for people nationwide: Equal opportunity. However Boris Johnson’s government did not possess the first clue on how to convert the popular slogan on social mobility into concrete action. For the two years after the 2019 election, it debated what the term truly represented.
It seemed strange to me, because I had previously explained to Johnson what social mobility signified when we initially discussed about it during the contest for party leader. The expression was language I created and used at the DfE to talk about equal opportunity. This became our departmental mantra, and its meaning is straightforward: levelling up is the method by which we attain equal access – without removing chances away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by expanding chances to those that are without.
Essential Principle
An additional vital DfE phrase we used, “ability is distributed uniformly around the UK, yet chances are not”, again was a deliberate expression, representing the two parts of a equal opportunity plan. First, talent spread evenly but not developed consistently through our education system. Furthermore, access not provided uniformly by businesses or our market. As a result, education and business were essential to achieving improved equality of opportunity. This represented an agenda about the community framework of our country – supporting people’s potential and linking them with opportunities.
The Actual Outcome
How did levelling up evolve into under the previous government? A towns fund administered out of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Decorative floral displays and redeveloped traffic systems. An official policy document was launched nearly three years after the leadership change, which saw current strategies relabelled under the recently branded agenda.
Consequently, a wider fairness strategy went ignored, as well as all the reform that it might have driven – in investment, enterprise, economic policy, taxation and in community development. Moreover, in learning, including a university system that has become a scapegoat for politicians of all stripes – despite the fact that it remains the strongest driver of life improvement for young working-class people, like me, this country has had in recent decades. Perhaps the primary source of equal opportunity, working extensively.
The Role of Ambition
Hope is essential for our country to prosper. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a believable feeling that dedication and outcome are connected; that if people aim high, they can achieve. For political leadership, being able to instil a outlook of positivity about the years ahead is important. Studies by the academic institution at Bath University and others, recently released, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I established during my tenure – locally targeted strategies to boosting academic achievement – led to students in those areas being up to a significant margin more hopeful about their life ahead than those in comparable communities without these schemes in place. The research confirms: just making an genuine beginning on pro-social mobility policy can swiftly and beneficially change how people perceive their future.
Lost Potential
Unaware of these findings, and in the midst of its successor selection process, in September 2022, the Conservative government terminated the programmes. Why would anyone in those areas vote for a party that did that? This specific initiative is a single instance of what could have been a revolutionary administration strategy on social mobility, but that chance was completely wasted. Strategies such as this can generate optimism and ambition. In contrast, as the ruling party found out, failing to deliver of equal opportunity is the most expensive error any political party can make. Voters penalized the government for its ineffectiveness but, above all, for its broken promises on levelling up.
Present Circumstances
Now the mandate on life chances and fair access has been taken up by a new administration. The levelling up rhetoric has been cast off. The current administration has its own policy language of “eliminating hurdles to advancement”. The party that is steadily supplanting the failing Tories, the alternative party, also has its own language – “industrial revival”. It’s a phrase to talk about new opportunities in areas like the one I was raised in, in my hometown. It claims that an historical manufacturing base can revive into an industrial future.
To the electorate, it must seem like a Groundhog Day-style loop. Identical problem, alternative phrasing. However, so far, no progress.
Lessons for the Future
Should the current and alternative parties want to avoid the identical outcome, both these parties should take lessons from the Tories’ mistakes on social mobility; that social mobility rhetoric is one thing, but effective implementation of improved opportunities is far more challenging. Britain’s endemically weak social mobility remains the key issue for our country, with the next generation unable to get a good job beginning, those working hard in employment with few results after the rent has been paid, and citizens throughout the UK without any actual expectation their offspring will be able to do any better in life than they have.
Politicians can mention fairer opportunities as much as they want. But where is the political group that has the comprehensive policy agenda on social mobility? None appear to exist. The first to achieve this, prevails. Not only for themselves, but, significantly, for a entire nation that has desperately requires equal access so badly.
