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Meeting the Individuals

Steve, 64, Essex

Occupation: Former underwriter

Voting record: Typically Conservative, apart from when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and supported the SDP

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

Eva, twenty-five, the capital

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her native land, New Zealand, she voted a combination of Labour and Green

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her longest trip was six months, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

Initial impressions

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

He: She seemed like a very intelligent, articulate, nice person

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

The big beef

Eva: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that UK residents who are native to the area, including non-white white British, face limited access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are arriving. Whereas I just don’t think the figures are so problematic

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I believe that authorities have used immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Pay are suppressed, so taxes have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on child support, on schooling, on technology

She: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was 16 and not living here when it happened. He explained it to me in a new light. He informed me about “posted workers” – candidates could come here and receive solely the wage of the their nation of origin

Steve: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undermining British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were imported; since then it’s been hospitality, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than international colleagues

Common ground

He: It would be ideal to have a different energy source, transition from fossil fuels. 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 Norway?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after the conflict began, 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 future. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be advancing to environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and hydro

Dessert topics

Eva: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did mention that a lot of the people in the Arab world were extremist, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on faith

He: 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 stare at me because it’s become very Muslim. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word segregated area. 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 their own.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe community?

She: I feel like Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It appears a little bit racist, or xenophobic

Takeaway

Steve: I think we separated amicably. We had a embrace at the train stop

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