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Meeting the Individuals

Steve, 64, Essex

Profession: Retired underwriter

Political history: Usually Tory, except when he resided in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the SDP

Interesting fact: His specialty in underwriting was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re planning rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have opened the weapon systems”

Evie, 25, London

Profession: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her home country, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of Labour and Green

Interesting fact: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a significant duration to be at sea

For starters

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

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

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

Key disagreement

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that UK residents who are native to the area, not just Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the things that they need, because more and more people are arriving. Whereas I just disagree that the figures are that bad

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I maintain that governments have used immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Pay are suppressed, so taxes have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on child support, on schooling, on technology

Eva: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was sixteen and abroad when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a new light. He informed me about “posted workers” – people could arrive in the UK and only be paid the wage of the country they came from

Steve: The French president spent two years getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; since then it’s been service industry, agriculture. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, I value fresh atmosphere, I love the countryside. We agreed 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 develop eco-friendly systems

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s not a good way to proceed. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the small amount we’ll require in the coming years. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be moving towards environmentally friendly options, windfarms and water power

For afters

She: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about extremism coming here – he did mention that a lot of the people in the Arab world were extremist, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on religion

He: I hail from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been modernized. Naturally, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I look like a foreigner. 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 doesn’t like that word, to her it implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a alternative term – maybe enclave?

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

Conclusion

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

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