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Introducing the Individuals

Steve, 64, Canvey Island

Occupation: Former underwriter

Political history: Usually Conservative, except when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the Social Democratic Party

Amuse bouche: His focus in insurance was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have activated the missile silos”

Eva, twenty-five, the capital

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her home country, New Zealand, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a long time to be on a boat

For starters

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

Steve: She seemed like a very intelligent, well-spoken, nice person

She: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, pasta with fungi, and a creamy dessert thing, it was very good

Key disagreement

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that UK residents who already live here, including non-white Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are arriving. However I just don’t think the numbers are so problematic

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I believe that governments have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without raising wages. Pay are suppressed, so levies have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on child support, on schooling, on innovation

Eva: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was 16 and not living here when it happened. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He told me about “posted workers” – people could come here and only be paid the salary of the their nation of origin

He: The French president spent two years getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was reformed in 2018. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undermining local employees. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were imported; later 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

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be great to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, I value fresh atmosphere, I love the countryside. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their energy revenues soared after the conflict began, 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 small amount we’ll need in the coming years. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be advancing to greener solutions, windfarms and water power

Dessert topics

Eva: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about extremism coming here – he did mention that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on religion

He: I hail from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been gentrified. Naturally, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I appear out of place. 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 implies deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I consented to substitute a alternative term – maybe community?

She: I believe that Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It appears a somewhat discriminatory, or xenophobic

Conclusion

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

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