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Meeting the Individuals

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Former insurance professional

Political history: Typically Tory, except when he resided 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 boring, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have activated the missile silos”

Evie, twenty-five, the capital

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her home country, Aotearoa, she supported both progressive parties

Amuse bouche: 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 seemed focused on enjoying the meal, to be receptive

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

She: I had a caprese salad, mushroom pasta, and a creamy dessert thing, it was delicious

Key disagreement

Eva: He was certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that UK residents who already live here, including non-white Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are entering. Whereas I just don’t think the numbers are so problematic

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, 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 struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Wages 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

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was sixteen 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 come here and receive solely the wage of the their nation of origin

Steve: Macron spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Before that, posted workers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were imported; since then it’s been hospitality, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Sharing plate

He: It would be ideal 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 soared after the conflict began, they used that money to build eco-friendly systems

Eva: 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 require in the future. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be advancing to environmentally friendly options, windfarms and hydro

Dessert topics

She: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about 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 discriminatory to form opinions based on faith

He: I come from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been modernized. 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 objects to the term, to her it denotes poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe community?

She: I feel like followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the media as engaging in misconduct. It seems a little bit racist, or xenophobic

Conclusion

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

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