I am not saying that Zadie Smith has grey teeth. I am reflecting on the sentiments she expresses in her ruminations for yesterday’s Guardian on the election. Her novel White Teeth was published in 2000, in what we might consider the heyday of Blairism. She is evidently one of those for whom 1979 was bad, 1997 was good, 2010 was bad, and 2024 is going to be good. We may well think of teeth because she mentions in her article a story about a girl aged 17 who has not seen a dentist for four years — because of privatisation, of course. Zadie likes to talk about the good old days of before “the last 14 years of the Tories” but has had to control herself because she thinks that her audiences now take this as a form of taunting by the older generation. “Who,” she asks, “wants to hear about decent social housing and world-class medical care when you can’t pay the rent, the neighbourhood school is failing and you haven’t seen a dentist for four years.”
Yes, indeed, if 1997-2010 was the era of White Teeth, then 2010-2024 was surely the era of Grey Teeth.
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