ALISON ROWAT’S

irreplaceable. “I hear her telling them things she used to tell me,” he once said. “She reminds them of the post-war rationing. So if they have great dollops of butter on their toast, she says that would have been a week’s ration. I love that, the historic continuity that you get.” Who wouldn’t?

The rich and posh would never dream of running around after their own children, and are perfectly willing to pay the right person whatever she – and it is mostly she – wants. Own flat within the home, paid holidays, good wage, free board, all available to the right candidate.

One might think it is every parent’s dream to have a nanny on hand in the home. No more frantic searches for last-minute childcare. Picking the children up and dropping them off, laundry, cooking, dealing with tantrums – every task someone else’s responsibility. For women it would be like having one of those fantastic whatchamacallits. No, not a robot. A wife.

Then again, would you really want a stranger around all the time? Worse, someone who is a professional at looking after children, who has trained, often for years, to do the job? Think of the shame as your amateur, bumbling efforts come under the beady eye of nanny. Just as every dog trainer knows the problem with an animal usually stems from the owner, so nannies appreciate that changing parental attitudes is half the battle.

No nannies, then, for ordinary bods. Or for so-called Broken Britain. Britain, or the UK, is doing just fine; it is Tory MPS who need whipping into shape by a nanny.

Not literally, that would be illegal (and worse, some might like it), but if someone down there could start administering the smack of firm government it would be most appreciated, not least by Mrs May.