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Meeting the Individuals

Steve, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Occupation: Former insurance professional

Political history: Usually Tory, except when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the SDP

Amuse bouche: His focus in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re planning rescuing people from South Korea because the North Koreans have activated the missile silos”

Evie, twenty-five, the capital

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her home country, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a significant duration to be at sea

For starters

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

He: She seemed like a very intelligent, articulate, pleasant person

She: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, mushroom pasta, and a creamy dessert thing, it was delicious

The big beef

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that UK residents who are native to the area, including non-white Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are entering. However I just don’t think the numbers are so problematic

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I maintain that authorities have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Wages are kept low, so taxes have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on child support, on education, on innovation

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and not living here when it occurred. He explained it to me in a new light. He informed me about EU labor migrants – people could arrive in the UK and only be paid the salary of the country they came from

He: Macron spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undermining local employees. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; since then it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be great to have a alternative power, transition from fossil fuels. I don’t like pollution, 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 oil and gas profits skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to build green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s not a good way to proceed. He was in favour of maintaining domestic drilling for the small amount we’ll need in the coming years. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, turbine fields and hydro

Dessert topics

She: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did mention that a many individuals in the Arab world were radical, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on religion

Steve: I come from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been gentrified. Naturally, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down that local market, I look like a foreigner. People gaze at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it denotes poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe community?

She: I believe that followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It appears a somewhat discriminatory, or xenophobic

Conclusion

He: I think we parted on good terms. We had a embrace at the train stop

Eva: We both said that we’d had a wonderful evening