Justine Greening’s oft-proposed bromide to solve problems of public finances, growth and productivity through the removal of inequality of opportunity is no more than a soft-soap UK variant of the American dream (What’s the big idea that could win the Conservatives the next election? Social mobility, 12 May). In the US, so the argument goes, if you work hard you will make it. The corollary of course is that if (and probably when) you don’t make it, you didn’t work hard enough – it was your fault.
Without addressing the underlying structural problems of inequality – in health, housing, transport and education – any Tory panacea of equality of opportunity is simply a device to get a few strivers to the top of the pile, while leaving the structural inequalities still in place. If you make it, that’s great, and if you don’t, well you can’t complain as you had an equal chance to succeed.
It is fantasy to suppose that social mobility will deal with the UK’s chronic economic and social problems. Levelling up is a conveniently vague phrase and perhaps some “red wall” voters thought it meant social mobility. Many more, I suspect, thought it meant fixing glaring failures in public provision. Most voters care little about the opportunity to be CEO of, say, a water or train company and make a pile of money. The things they care far more about include clean rivers and an efficient public transport system – along with all the other enablers and benefits that a thriving G7 economy must provide, such as healthcare and affordable housing.
Perhaps the real problem for the current generation of Conservatives is that they are unable to see the role that the state can play in driving the economy through capital investment and a sustained industrial strategy. They want to be in office, but they don’t want to govern; small-state thinkers in a big-state universe.
As the UK continues to lose pace with the rest of the G7 and the Brexit promises become more visibly hollow, let us hope that a better alternative comes sooner rather than later.
Henry Thompson
Harrogate, North Yorkshire
• Justine Greening is right to recognise a fundamental lack of equality of opportunity in the UK. But for a party ideologically opposed to public services and ideologically committed to enriching a small percentage of the population at the expense of the rest, inequality is struck through it like a stick of Blackpool rock. The Conservative party would love the next general election to be fought on vision and ideas rather than on record, but Greening fails to acknowledge that delivery of equality of opportunity would by its very nature require a superordinate change in the culture of the party.
Philip Smith
Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire
• Justine Greening’s cause is important, but anyone who believes the 2019 election was about social mobility is deluded. It was entirely about Brexit and “getting it done”. Levelling up is a valid cause and should receive both focus and funding, but it is not what the next election will be about. The next election will be about the cost of living and the NHS – two things where the party’s record is left wanting. The election after next, levelling up may get some traction. For the forthcoming election, the focus should be on undoing the dreadful harm of the previous Tory governments.
Ben Kenyon
London
