The growth in coverage of, and interest in, mobility in political speeches has been too marked to be dismissed as mere coincidence. However, it might be argued that this talk does not necessarily translate into a real change of political priorities. Mobility did not monopolise politics. The period covered in the previous chapter also saw increased verbal traffic about the importance of getting people into paid employment, about gun and knife street crimes, about the threat of terrorism, urban riots and, of course, the impact on the British economy of the world financial crisis caused by the banking system following its deregulation by the Thatcher and Reagan governments. Despite its undoubted increased prominence, social mobility is not the only key term or policy objective; it has yet to loom quite as large as ‘social exclusion’ did in the rhetoric of the early days of New Labour. Fashions come and go in politics (and sociology).

For balance, it is worth noting for instance that Toynbee and Walker's (2005, 2011) excellent reviews of the Labour governments’ performance devote chapters to changes in health, education, wealth and fairness per se, covering shares of national income; poverty; children and benefits; single parents; unemployment; personal income; pensions, gender differences and minority ethnic groups. Social mobility gets a bare handful of pages out of well over 600 pages of text. Mobility is clearly not the only issue that has become fashionable (or a ‘generalised panic’, as one article in The Guardian described it (Clark 2010)); nor has it displaced these rival concerns. Mobility anxiety also stands as proxy for worries about wider social inequality and disenchantment. The revolution of rising expectations has created a powerful source of political discontent, and it is within this context that the sociopolitical impact of mobility takes place.

Although New Labour was first out of the traps in the race for mobility policies, political speeches since the late 1990s show how deeply mobility has become embedded in political discourse. Nonetheless, arguing the case through exclusive reliance on politicians’ ephemeral speeches (which are hard to check) or election manifestos would risk unconscious cherry-picking of examples. To insure against this danger of selectivity and confirmation bias this chapter examines a more comprehensive written record, which fortunately has recently emerged.