Re Zadie Smith’s article (‘Here comes the sun’: Zadie Smith on hope, trepidation and rebirth after 14 years of the Tories, 3 July), I’m hoping against hope (we’ve been here before) that on Friday, the miasma of greed, self-centredness and downright stupidity will have evaporated and we will have a government whose fundamental purpose is to support, serve and improve the whole of the UK and not just to rip the lead off the roof and steal the last lightbulbs. A government that genuinely means to roll up its sleeves and sort out the mess.
I’m from the generation of free orange juice and cod-liver oil, smaller-scale secondary schools that weren’t businesses but educational establishments, and hospitals where you saw physiotherapists as soon as – and for as long as – you needed, where patients lay in wards, not corridors.
Watching Rishi Sunak talking about his lack of Sky TV finally made clear to me what Marie Antoinette meant about eating cake. Well, it’s definitely time for change – this country deserves some hope.
Barbara Kay
Wallasey, Merseyside
• Zadie Smith’s superb, angry and telling article speaks of the £570bn locked up in offshore accounts by British residents. Rishi Sunak bleats about the Ukraine war as a drain on our economy, but in 1946, after the second world war, the Labour government brought into being the welfare state (what quaint, longed-for words they sound now). Smith’s vivid evocation of its destruction by self-serving Toryism hints at the huge amounts that Labour will have to find to put these great losses right, from what sounds like an empty purse – except it isn’t empty.
The billions that should fund the welfare state have been creamed off by privatisation and tax giveaways to a voraciously rich yet minuscule proportion of our people. Keir Starmer, you need to open and release this treasure chest – it could achieve miracles.
Bee Hepworth
Leigh-on-Sea, Essex
• Congratulations to Zadie Smith for making sense of the way many are feeling right now, not just about the state of the country but also about their perception of the Labour party. The party, which is in a catch-22 whichever way it turns, has actually played a blinder in the last two years. Friday will be the time to shake your chains to earth like dew, to quote another poet. The Tories howl about all the misfortune they have suffered on their watch, from Covid to Brexit, and use it as an excuse to continue the slash-and-burn policies they are so attached to, but think on this – Attlee had to rebuild a country after a world war and did it in five years. The key to all this? A lot of borrowing, yes, but also a lot of ambition and a desire to make Britain a modern, fair and caring country where the idea of “opportunity for all” was ingrained from cradle to the grave. It’s still in us all, buried deep after half a century of neoliberal brainwashing, but it can be found again – the spirit that both Shelley and Attlee summoned in their own way.
David Bailey
Almería, Spain (Voting in the constituency of Guildford)
• Zadie Smith almost brought tears to my eyes and gagged my throat. I was a postwar working-class baby who had a free university education in the 60s. Everything I valued seems to have been attacked in these last years, and my urban environment has become shabby and depressing. Thank you so much for an article which set me off with a feeling of joy, and said that I don’t have to wait till Friday morning. I’ve waited too long already.
Carole Cregan
Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire
• Zadie Smith’s wonderful, accurate, sobering but ultimately inspiring article has made me hopeful, and hopefully had the same effect on many more people. We cannot succumb to nihilism. We owe the next generation a fight against inequality and the restoration of a more moral and empathetic society.
Rhiannon England
London
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