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While the struggling Conservative party convenes in Manchester for its yearly gathering, it has plenty to consider regarding its future direction. There is uncertainty if a viable path remains open. These are challenging circumstances for a political party that now has very little, if anything, fresh or distinctive to say to the public.

What Could Have Been

Things could have turned out so different if tangible progress had been made on an agenda that matters to people across the country: Levelling up. But the former leadership did not possess the basic understanding on how to transform the popular slogan on levelling up into concrete action. During the initial period after the general election, it argued over what the term truly represented.

I was perplexed, because I had previously explained to Johnson what social mobility signified when we first spoke about it during the contest for party leader. The expression was language I created and used at the Department for Education to talk about life chances. It served as our core mission, and its purpose is straightforward: levelling up is the approach by which we realize equal access – without removing chances away from those who are already advantaged, but rather by extending opportunities to those that lack them.

The Core Concept

The other key DfE phrase we used, “talent is spread evenly throughout the nation, but opportunity is not”, served as a purposeful phrase, representing the dual components of a fairness agenda. To begin with, ability distributed uniformly but not developed consistently through our learning institutions. Additionally, access not provided uniformly by employers or our economic system. As a result, learning and employment were crucial to achieving improved equality of opportunity. This represented an priority about the community framework of our country – investing in human talent and providing access to opportunities.

The Actual Outcome

How did levelling up become under the previous government? A towns fund overseen from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Decorative floral displays and rearranged intersections. A white paper was launched a significant period after Johnson became leader, which saw ongoing initiatives relabelled under the new levelling up banner.

Therefore, a wider fairness strategy went undeveloped, as well as all the change that it may have generated – in funding, business, economic policy, tax and in community development. Additionally, in education, including a university system that has become a target for elected officials – although it remains the primary vehicle of social mobility for young working-class people, including myself, this country has had over the past 30 years. Possibly the sole mechanism of equal opportunity, functioning widely.

Why Hope Matters

Hope is essential for our country to prosper. For people to have aspiration, there needs to be a credible sense that hard work and results are related; that if people aspire, they can succeed. For political leadership, being able to instil a sense of optimism about the future is important. Analysis by the research body at Bath University and others, recently released, showed that the education department’s targeted regions I introduced as education secretary – place-based approaches to improving education outcomes – led to youth in those communities being up to nearly one-fifth more hopeful about their life ahead than those in similar areas without these schemes in place. The evidence is clear: just making an sincere effort on pro-social mobility policy can rapidly and effectively change how people feel about their destiny.

Squandered Chances

Ignoring this evidence, and in the midst of its successor selection process, in that period, the ruling party terminated the programmes. Why should any person in those areas vote for a political group that did that? The targeted programme is a clear case of what could have been a revolutionary administration strategy on social mobility, but that opportunity was completely wasted. Strategies such as this can generate optimism and ambition. Conversely, as the Tories found out, reneging on commitments of social mobility is the costliest mistake any leadership can make. The electorate punished the leadership for its ineffectiveness but, perhaps most of all, for its broken promises on social mobility.

Today’s Political Reality

Now the mandate on life chances and equality of opportunity has been taken up by a opposition party. The previous terminology has been cast off. Labour has its own public messaging of “removing obstacles to success”. The organization that is gradually replacing the hapless Conservative party, the challenger, also has its own language – “industrial revival”. The terminology to talk about fresh prospects in regions like the one I grew up in, in the region. It claims that an industrial past can reincarnate into an revitalized economy.

To the electorate, it must feel like a Groundhog Day-style loop. Same issue, different language. Yet, currently, little improvement.

What Must Change

If Labour and Reform UK want to escape the identical outcome, the respective organizations should learn from the Conservatives’ failure on levelling up; that social mobility rhetoric is easy to say, but effective implementation of fairer outcomes is much harder. Our nation’s persistently low life chances remains the central problem for our country, with youth unable to get a good job beginning, those putting in effort in occupations with minimal progress after the living expenses are met, and citizens throughout the UK without any genuine belief their next generation will be able to do advance in life than they have.

Elected officials can discuss fairer opportunities however much they like. Yet where is the party that has the comprehensive policy agenda on equal opportunity? None appear to exist. Whichever party succeeds initially, wins. Not only for their organization, but, significantly, for a entire nation that has never needed equal access so desperately.