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The writer is the author of ‘The End of Aspiration?’
It has been traditional for every prime minister since Margaret Thatcher to make extravagant promises to improve the UK’s social mobility. Even low-key prime ministers such as Gordon Brown and Theresa May made enthusiastic promises of an “age of aspirations,” heralding “the world’s great meritocracy.”
At least, had It has been the tradition: during Boris Johnson’s term the focus shifted from individual opportunities to “leveling up” communities. And social mobility disappeared entirely from the lexicon under Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak.
The meritocratic rhetoric of 1979-2019 was always at odds with reality. Even five years ago, the chances of economic mobility (moving up or down the income ladder compared to parents of the same age) were worse than in other developed countries and had declined for post-boom generations. The number of people with working-class parents in middle-class jobs, common in the postwar decades, was smaller than the number of middle-class children missing around the world.
So talking about ambitions didn’t work, but removing social mobility from the agenda wasn’t accompanied by the emergence of – to use Tony Blair’s phrase – “a society of opportunity”.
My research five years ago followed people from humble beginnings with careers as CEOs, surgeons, politicians, actors, and a billionaire businessman. Their stories revealed recurring factors that allowed their rise. However, the last five years reduced them all.
The first alerted me when two of my interviewees used the phrase “I had a posh friend.” These pairs normalize aspirations that might otherwise seem unattainable and are guides to the arcane protocols of elite racing. But housing costs have steadily segregated neighborhoods by income and, through catchment areas, schools as well. This, and the government’s decision to allow religious schools to select all their students by faith, makes cross-class friendships less likely.
The second element is security. The income of these families was low but stable; none grew up in private rentals. Making plans for the future is more difficult when the present is precarious. Once again, the situation has worsened in five years: as the Institute for Social and Economic Research discovered, “the “tight middle” is now the “precarious middle” . . . fighting to save. . . more likely than before to have insecure jobs and homes.” The new Tenants (Reform) Bill promised greater security for children born in private rented homes, who are now the majority. But, Shelter says, it has become so watered down that the organization can no longer support it.
An elite career is also more likely if the path to opportunity is costless: the living expenses incurred by amassing a portfolio of unpaid work to demonstrate talent for a paid role in the media or arts, for example. But tolls have increased. Real terms cuts to maintenance loans mean that an English student with the maximum loan must work 19 hours at minimum wage to cover her living costs, reducing the chance of extracurricular experience.
However, the biggest enabler of upward social mobility is “space at the top.” The massive upward mobility of the 1950s and 1960s was the result of new white-collar and skilled jobs. There has been growth in well-paid occupations in recent years, but IFS analysis shows this is largely a London phenomenon. For people like one graduate I met, who turned down a job in the capital because they couldn’t pay the rent and deposit up front, these opportunities are closed to up-and-coming provincials.
The policy tools to revive social mobility exist, as conversely demonstrated by the avoidable obstacles to opportunity over the past five years. There is also voter appetite: we want to get out of the gutter in the short term, but we also want our children to reach for the stars. The next five should see him return to the top of the agenda.