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Meeting the Individuals

Steve, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Occupation: Retired insurance professional

Political history: Usually Tory, apart from when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the Social Democratic Party

Amuse bouche: His focus in insurance was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re planning rescuing people from South Korea because the North Koreans have opened the missile silos”

Eva, twenty-five, the capital

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her native land, New Zealand, she supported both Labour and Green

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

For starters

Eva: Steve seemed focused on enjoying the meal, to be receptive

Steve: She seemed like a very bright, articulate, nice person

Eva: I had a caprese salad, 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 already live here, not just Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are arriving. Whereas I just don’t think the figures are so problematic

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I maintain that authorities have used immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without raising wages. Pay are kept low, so taxes have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on child support, on schooling, on innovation

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and not living here when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He told me about EU labor migrants – people could arrive in the UK and receive solely the wage of the country they came from

Steve: Macron spent two years getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undermining British workers. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were imported; later it’s been hospitality, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Sharing plate

He: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, transition from fossil fuels. I disapprove of environmental harm, I value fresh atmosphere, I appreciate rural areas. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to build eco-friendly systems

She: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to go about things. He was in favour of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity we’ll need in the future. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, turbine fields and water power

For afters

She: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did note that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were extremist, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on faith

Steve: I hail from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been modernized. Naturally, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down Chrisp Street 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 “ghetto”. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she doesn’t like that word, to her it implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe community?

Eva: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the media as doing things wrong. It seems a little bit discriminatory, or xenophobic

Takeaway

He: I think we separated amicably. We had a hug at the train stop

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