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Meeting the Individuals

Steve, 64, Essex

Occupation: Former underwriter

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

Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re planning evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have opened the weapon systems”

Eva, 25, the capital

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her native land, New Zealand, she supported both progressive parties

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her longest trip was half a year, which is a significant duration to be at sea

Initial impressions

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

Steve: She came across as a very bright, well-spoken, pleasant person

Eva: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, mushroom pasta, and a creamy dessert thing, it was delicious

Key disagreement

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks 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 arriving. Whereas I just don’t think the figures 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 exploited immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Pay are kept low, so taxes 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 Brexit, because I was sixteen and not living here when it occurred. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He told me about “posted workers” – candidates could arrive in the UK and receive solely the wage of the country they came from

He: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the system; it was revised in 2018. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were imported; since then it’s been hospitality, agriculture. 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, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, I value fresh atmosphere, I love the countryside. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after the conflict began, they used that money to develop green infrastructure

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s not a good way to proceed. He was in favour of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity we’ll need in the coming years. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be advancing to environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and water power

Dessert topics

She: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did mention that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on religion

He: I come from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been gentrified. Obviously, 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 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 agreed to use a different word – maybe community?

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

Conclusion

Steve: I think we parted on good terms. We had a embrace at the station

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