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Meeting the Individuals

Steve, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Occupation: Retired underwriter

Political history: Usually Tory, except when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His focus in underwriting was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re planning evacuating people from South Korea because the DPRK have opened the missile silos”

Eva, 25, the capital

Profession: Psychology graduate

Political history: In her home country, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her longest trip was six months, which is a long time to be at sea

For starters

She: Steve appeared focused on enjoying the meal, to be receptive

He: She came across as a very bright, well-spoken, pleasant person

She: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, pasta with fungi, and a rich sweet treat, it was delicious

Key disagreement

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that UK residents who are native to the area, including non-white white British, face limited access to the things that they need, because more and more people are arriving. Whereas I just don’t think the numbers are that bad

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I believe that authorities have used immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Pay are suppressed, so levies have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on childcare, on education, on innovation

Eva: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was sixteen and abroad when it occurred. He explained it to me in a new light. He informed me about EU labor migrants – candidates could come here and receive solely the wage of the their nation of origin

Steve: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the system; it was revised in 2018. Previously, posted workers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were imported; since then it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than international colleagues

Common ground

Steve: It would be ideal to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, I value fresh atmosphere, I love the countryside. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they used that money to develop eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s not a good way to go about things. He was supportive of continuing our own oil exploration for the small amount we’ll require in the coming years. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be advancing to greener solutions, turbine fields and hydro

For afters

Eva: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about extremism coming here – he did note that a lot of the people in the Arab world were extremist, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions based on religion

Steve: I come from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been gentrified. Obviously, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down that local market, I look like a foreigner. People stare at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she doesn’t like that word, to her it denotes poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe community?

Eva: I feel like Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It appears a somewhat racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

He: I think we separated amicably. We had a embrace at the station

She: We both said that we’d had a lovely time