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Meeting the Individuals

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Retired underwriter

Political history: Typically Conservative, apart from when he resided in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the Social Democratic Party

Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re planning evacuating people from South Korea because the DPRK have activated the missile silos”

Eva, twenty-five, London

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

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

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her longest trip was half a year, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

Initial impressions

Eva: Steve appeared there to have a nice time, to be receptive

Steve: She seemed like a very intelligent, well-spoken, nice person

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

The big beef

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

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I maintain that governments have exploited immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Pay are suppressed, so taxes have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on technology

Eva: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was sixteen and abroad when it happened. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about EU labor migrants – people could come here and receive solely the wage of the their nation of origin

He: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the system; it was reformed in 2018. Previously, posted workers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; later it’s been service industry, agriculture. She understood that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Common ground

He: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, I love the clean air, I appreciate rural areas. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their oil and gas profits soared after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to build eco-friendly systems

Eva: 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 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

For afters

Eva: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did note that a lot of the people in the Arab world were radical, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s prejudiced 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. 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 very Muslim. She gave a slight glance 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 their own.” I consented to substitute a alternative term – maybe community?

Eva: I believe that followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It appears a little bit racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

He: I think we parted on good terms. We had a hug at the station

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