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Introducing the Individuals

Steve, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Former insurance professional

Political history: Typically Conservative, apart from when he resided in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the Social Democratic Party

Amuse bouche: His focus in insurance was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re planning evacuating people from South Korea because the DPRK have activated the weapon systems”

Eva, twenty-five, London

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her native land, New Zealand, she voted a combination of 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 at sea

Initial impressions

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

Steve: She came across as a very bright, articulate, pleasant person

She: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, pasta with fungi, and a rich sweet treat, it was very good

The big beef

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that British people who already live here, including non-white Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are entering. Whereas I just don’t think the figures are so problematic

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I believe that governments have used immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Wages are suppressed, so levies have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on innovation

Eva: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and abroad when it occurred. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He told me about “posted workers” – candidates could come here and only be paid the wage of the their nation of origin

He: The French president spent two years getting the EU to do away with the system; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Previously, posted workers coming in were undermining local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were imported; later it’s been service industry, agriculture. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Common ground

He: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, transition from fossil fuels. I don’t like pollution, I love the clean air, I love the countryside. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their oil and gas profits skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they used that money to develop green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s not a good way to go about things. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll need 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 greener solutions, windfarms and hydro

Dessert topics

She: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about extremism coming here – he did note that a lot of the people in the Arab world were radical, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on religion

Steve: 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: populated by professionals. But when I go down that local market, I look like a foreigner. People stare 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 objects to the term, to her it denotes deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a alternative term – maybe community?

She: I believe that followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It appears a little bit racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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

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