So perhaps it's time to adjust the polarities we play with. The choice shouldn't be between having a nanny or dispensing with her - the choice is between having a better and a worse nanny. We are always going to have propaganda; we are always going to have ideology. Nanny is here to stay. Therefore, rather than constantly berating politicians who dare to bring forward policies that publicly edge beyond the timid stated limits of liberalism (for example, those who dare to express a vision of the nation or of the family or of the ultimate purpose of education), we should encourage our politicians to speak and then submit their words to forensic analysis.

Embarrassment about a nanny state has held back the debate on the ends of politics. It means that politicians routinely fail to admit their prejudices and hold back from their sense of what is good, for fear of causing offence - while nevertheless slyly promoting their visions with the same reforming zeal as a leader of ancient Sparta.

The current Conservatives appear divided over how candid to be about the ends of politics. Half of the party, the declining David Davisian wing, still subscribes to a libertarian way of framing their concerns. The other, Cameroonian, side feels temperamentally sympathetic to the quasi-theological idea of government quietly held by New Labour - but it rarely admits to this attraction.

Yet the Cameroonians have firm ideas on what family life should be like. They hint that the purpose of state education should be to teach one how to be wise and good, not just -numerate and literate. They aren't wrong to speak like this: whatever our desire to declare ourselves beyond the services of a nanny, we remain dependent on the con-sequences of political decisions.

It might be time for both parties to make their prejudices and distinctions clear. Both of them believe in a nanny state at heart. Why not bring the debate into the open so that we could have a clearer choice of which kind of nanny they were signing themselves up to?