The Limits of ‘Opportunity’: Is There a Clear Labour or Conservative View of Social Mobility?

This article considers the relationship between views of social mobility in British politics, identifying four competing views in government statements, political news stories and opinion pieces. The two established views are the Blairite liberal view, which seeks to widen entry into the ‘playing fi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Political quarterly (London. 1930) 2024-04, Vol.95 (2), p.308-314
Main Author: Maslen, Joseph
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
aspiration
Assimilation
class
Conservatism
Conservative Party
education
Labor
Labour Party
Liberalism
Media coverage
Occupational mobility
Rhetoric
Social meaning
Social mobility
Socialism
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Summary:This article considers the relationship between views of social mobility in British politics, identifying four competing views in government statements, political news stories and opinion pieces. The two established views are the Blairite liberal view, which seeks to widen entry into the ‘playing field’ of educational ‘opportunity’, and its companion bourgeois view, protecting the acclaim given to elite educational experiences. Against these established views are two insurgent views: a (politically ignored) socialist view and a ‘postliberal’ view introduced into the Social Mobility Commission under the chairship of the loosely Conservative‐aligned Katharine Birbalsingh. On the right, the postliberal and bourgeois views explicitly clash. On the left, with the socialist view dormant, the postliberal view is assimilated by Labour almost as a socialism substitute, appearing in turn with the Blairite liberal view in Labour rhetoric. The result is, respectively on right and left, disharmony and incoherence in the meaning of social mobility.
ISSN:0032-3179
1467-923X
DOI:10.1111/1467-923X.13368