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Meeting the Individuals

Stephen, sixty-four, Essex

Occupation: Retired insurance professional

Voting record: Usually Tory, except when he resided in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the Social Democratic Party

Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re discussing rescuing people from South Korea because the DPRK have opened the weapon systems”

Eva, 25, the capital

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her home country, New Zealand, she supported both progressive parties

Interesting fact: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her longest trip was six months, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

Initial impressions

She: Steve seemed there to have a nice time, to be receptive

Steve: She seemed like a very bright, articulate, pleasant person

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

The big beef

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that UK residents who are native to the area, not just white British, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because more and more people are entering. However I just don’t think the figures are that bad

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I believe that governments have used immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Pay are suppressed, so taxes have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on innovation

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was sixteen and abroad when it happened. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about “posted workers” – people could come here and receive solely the salary of the country they came from

Steve: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the system; it was reformed in 2018. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; since then it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She understood that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be great to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, I love the clean air, I appreciate rural areas. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to build green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. 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 coming years. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and water power

Dessert topics

She: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did mention that a lot of the people in the Arab world were radical, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on faith

He: I hail from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been gentrified. Obviously, I would say that: populated by professionals. 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 Polish-Jewish ancestry – she objects to the term, to her it denotes deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a alternative term – maybe community?

She: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the media as engaging in misconduct. It seems a little bit discriminatory, or xenophobic

Conclusion

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

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