Current Conservative policy sits uneasily between these two positions. If Cameron and Gove cannot stomach the idea that parents should be allowed to use vouchers to help pay independent school fees, they should stop talking about empowering parents. If they want to develop an alternative to Labour's commitment to state control, then they need to understand that public policy should not be framed negatively. 

It is wrong to deny a benefit to one group within society because another group may not be able or willing to use that benefit, though, as a point of fact, the evidence from America is that the disadvantaged have seized the opportunity vouchers offer to rescue their children from the misery of sink inner-city schools with great enthusiasm.

The voucher is the key to the schools revolution Gove wants to initiate. It would increase demand for private education and attract more suppliers into the market. The state monopoly would be broken. There would be real competition between schools, as there is in the independent sector. And competition means that schools would have to respond to the aspirations of their parents and potential parents. If their teachers chose to pursue the ideological enthusiasms of their predecessors in the Sixties, then they would be likely to find themselves out of work. A handful of Guardian readers might hanker after child-centred progressive schooling, but the vast majority of parents would, I predict, want the traditional approaches to education that for so long have been derided and ignored.

School inspection and state regulation have failed. Parent power could succeed. This is the prize. Do Cameron and Gove have the political courage to seize it, or will we have free schools that are not free, parents who are not empowered? A policy that is, at best, a fudge, at worst a smoke and mirrors deception.