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Meeting the Individuals

Steve, sixty-four, Essex

Profession: Former insurance professional

Political history: Typically Conservative, apart from when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the SDP

Interesting fact: His specialty in insurance was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re planning rescuing people from South Korea because the North Koreans have opened the weapon systems”

Eva, 25, London

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her home country, Aotearoa, she supported both progressive parties

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her longest trip was half a year, which is a long time to be on a boat

Initial impressions

She: Steve seemed there to have a nice time, to be open

He: She seemed like a very intelligent, well-spoken, pleasant person

Eva: I had a caprese salad, mushroom pasta, and a rich sweet treat, it was very good

The big beef

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that UK residents who already live here, including non-white white British, face limited access to the essential services, because more and more people are arriving. However I just disagree that the figures are that bad

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I believe that governments have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Wages are kept low, so taxes have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on childcare, on education, on technology

She: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was 16 and abroad when it occurred. He explained it to me in a new light. He told me about EU labor migrants – people could arrive in the UK and receive solely the salary of the their nation of origin

Steve: The French president spent two years getting the EU to do away with the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undermining local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were brought in; later it’s been hospitality, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Common ground

Steve: It would be ideal to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, I love the clean air, I appreciate rural areas. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their oil and gas profits skyrocketed after the conflict began, they used that money to build eco-friendly systems

She: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s not a good way to proceed. He was supportive of continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll need 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 briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did note that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions based on faith

Steve: I come from the East End. 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 Chrisp Street market, I appear out of place. People gaze at me because it’s become very Muslim. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she objects to the term, to her it implies deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a alternative term – maybe community?

Eva: I believe that followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It seems a little bit racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

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

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