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Meeting the Individuals

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Former underwriter

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

Interesting fact: His focus in insurance was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re planning rescuing people from South Korea because the North Koreans have activated the weapon systems”

Eva, 25, the capital

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her home country, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was half a year, which is a long time to be at sea

For starters

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

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

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

The big beef

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that British people who are native to the area, including non-white white British, face limited access to the things that they need, because more and more people are entering. Whereas I just disagree that the numbers are so problematic

Steve: 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 fill the jobs they struggle to staff without raising wages. Pay are kept low, so taxes have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on child support, on education, on technology

She: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and abroad when it happened. He clarified 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: The French president spent two years getting the EU to do away with the system; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were imported; since then it’s been service industry, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Common ground

Steve: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, transition from fossil fuels. 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 allocated those funds to develop green infrastructure

She: 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 environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and hydro

Dessert topics

Eva: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did note that a lot of the people in the Arab world were extremist, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions based on religion

Steve: I come from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been gentrified. Naturally, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down that local market, I look like a foreigner. People gaze at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she objects to the term, to her it implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe community?

She: I believe that followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the media as engaging in misconduct. It seems a somewhat discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

He: I think we separated amicably. We had a embrace at the station

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