Journalists were quick to note David Cameron’s retreat from the voucher system for schools. Vouchers increase parental involvement by increasing their choices, and it is important that those with a say in education reform should not overlook their political impact and importance.

The policy proposed, and from which David Cameron seems to be retreating, is essentially a clone of the Swedish system, as detailed in this paper by the Research Institute of Industrial Economics in Stockholm.

It is simple to set up a private school. They can be community run, for profit, or charitably. They can, as long as they obey certain basics of the curriculum, teach what they like. They cannot charge top up fees and the municipality must fund it in direct proportion to the number of pupils it attracts. This is what was being proposed, and while allowing top up fees would be even better, Cameron really does seem to have missed the point.

A large part of the political left in the UK, perhaps most of the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties, use things Scandinavian as a template, a design for what would make a better society. Scandinavian is equated with ‘good.’ The Conservatives showed political astuteness by proposing Scandinavian-style vouchers in education.

The principle can be extended to other policy areas. To those who praise the French health system above our own it can be pointed out that it includes private providers and private top up insurance. These things are worth doing for their own sake, of course, because they offer solutions to intractable public sector problems. But it is also useful in politics to confuse and confound one’s enemies, and this seems to be the point which David Cameron might have missed.

(Tim Worstall writes here)