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Meeting the Individuals

Steve, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Occupation: Retired underwriter

Voting record: Typically Conservative, except when he resided in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the SDP

Interesting fact: His specialty in insurance was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re planning evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have activated the missile silos”

Eva, 25, the capital

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Political history: In her home country, New Zealand, she supported both Labour and Green

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

For starters

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

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

She: I had a caprese salad, mushroom pasta, and a rich sweet treat, it was delicious

Key disagreement

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that British people who already live here, not just Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are arriving. However I just disagree that the figures are so problematic

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I believe that governments have used immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Pay are kept low, so levies have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on childcare, on schooling, on technology

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and not living here when it occurred. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about EU labor migrants – people could come here and only be paid the salary of the their nation of origin

Steve: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Previously, posted workers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were brought in; since then it’s been hospitality, farms. 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

Steve: It would be ideal to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, I love the clean air, I love the countryside. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their energy revenues soared after Ukraine started, they used that money to develop green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re using their oil. 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 coming years. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, windfarms and hydro

For afters

Eva: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did note that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions 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 appear out of place. People gaze at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it denotes deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I agreed to use a alternative term – maybe community?

Eva: I believe that Muslim people are really overrepresented in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It appears a somewhat discriminatory, or xenophobic

Conclusion

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

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