David Cameron has said that he wants to "give people more responsibilities". He believes that "if you trust people, they will tend to do the right thing" and that "they will make better decisions than those the state would make on their behalf". I agree. Education is a contested concept. Different parents have different aspirations for their children. If people are to be given "more power and control over their lives", then Gove will need to find ways to encourage a real diversity of provision within the system. He must let the flowers bloom and he must trust parents to pick those they find attractive.

The truth is this. Freeing schools from local authority control means nothing, because local authorities now have little or no control over schools. The control comes from central government, through the national curriculum, inspection and quangos such as the Training and Development Agency and the National College for School Leadership, which tell teachers how they should teach and what education should involve. Academies and free schools will not have to follow the national curriculum, but in every other significant way they are creatures of the state. The freedoms the government likes to trumpet (their ability to set pay and conditions for staff and to change the length of the school day and terms) are trivial. The one real freedom that would allow a genuine diversity of provision has been explicitly forbidden. They are not able to determine their own admissions procedures.

Imagine you are a parent with a bright ten-year-old daughter. There are no grammar schools within travelling distance of where you live. You do not think that a nearby Academy offers the intellectually challenging teaching your daughter needs. You would like, therefore, to set up an academically selective free school. Can you? No, of course you can't. You can have any school you want provided it is a bog-standard comprehensive. Cameron's trust only goes so far. When it comes to selective education, he knows best.

You have voted Conservative all your life. You assume that a Conservative Prime Minister would want to support people who work hard in order to ensure that their children have the best possible start in life, who decide, for instance, that they are going to stick with the clapped-out Cortina so that they have the money to send their daughter to an independent school. Your daughter passes the examination to a fiercely academic private school. If you had decided to establish a free school, you know that you would have been given a sum of money equivalent to that which the state spends on a pupil in a nearby authority school. Can you cash this sum of money in as part payment of the fees charged by the independent school? No, you can't. Since last year, if you were dying of cancer, you would be allowed to pay for drugs that are not available on the National Health Service, but when it comes to education this permission to top up with your own hard-earned cash is denied.

If I were this hypothetical parent I am not sure that when, as it surely will, the alliance collapses, I would be voting Conservative. Those who argue against the idea of an education voucher, which can be used in any way the parent wishes, dislike the idea of subsidies being given to the rich and feel that education is too important to our economic prosperity and social cohesion to allow any parent to buy an advantage for their child. The counter-argument, rooted in a sense of how hopelessly the State has failed to deliver the education the individual and the country needs and a recognition that there are many middle- and low-income families which would send their children to private schools if they could afford the fees, is that education is too important for the State not to help any parent who wishes to send their child to a private school.