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Introducing the Individuals

Steve, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Occupation: Former underwriter

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

Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re planning evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have opened the missile silos”

Eva, 25, the capital

Profession: Graduate in psychology

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

Interesting fact: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was half a year, which is a significant duration to be at sea

For starters

Eva: Steve seemed focused on enjoying the meal, to be open

He: She came across as a very bright, articulate, nice person

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

The big beef

She: 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 essential services, because more and more people are entering. However I just don’t think the numbers are that bad

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I maintain that governments have used immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without raising wages. Pay are suppressed, so levies have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on child support, on education, on innovation

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was sixteen and not living here 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 their nation of origin

Steve: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were imported; later it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was earning significantly higher than international colleagues

Common ground

He: It would be great to have a alternative power, transition from fossil fuels. 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 Norway?” Their energy revenues soared after the conflict began, they used that money to develop green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re using their oil. 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 require in the future. 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 water power

Dessert topics

Eva: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did note that a lot of the people in the Arab world were radical, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on faith

He: I hail from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been modernized. Naturally, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I appear out of place. People stare at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she doesn’t like that word, to her it denotes deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe enclave?

Eva: I feel like followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It appears a somewhat racist, or xenophobic

Takeaway

Steve: I think we parted on good terms. We had a hug at the train stop

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