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Meeting the Individuals

Steve, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Occupation: Retired insurance professional

Political history: Usually Conservative, except when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the SDP

Interesting fact: His focus in insurance was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing rescuing people from South Korea because the DPRK have opened the weapon systems”

Eva, 25, London

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Political history: In her native land, New Zealand, she supported both Labour and Green

Interesting fact: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a significant duration to be at sea

Initial impressions

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

Steve: She came across as a very intelligent, articulate, nice person

Eva: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, mushroom pasta, and a creamy dessert thing, it was delicious

Key disagreement

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that British people who already live here, not just white British, face limited access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are arriving. Whereas I just don’t think the numbers are so problematic

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I maintain that governments have exploited immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Wages are suppressed, so taxes have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on child support, on schooling, on innovation

She: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and abroad when it occurred. He explained it to me in a new light. He told me about “posted workers” – candidates could arrive in the UK and receive solely the salary of the their nation of origin

Steve: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was revised in 2018. Previously, posted workers coming in were undermining local employees. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were imported; later it’s been service industry, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Common ground

Steve: It would be great to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, I value fresh atmosphere, I appreciate rural areas. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their energy revenues soared after Ukraine started, they used that money to develop green infrastructure

She: So we’re using their oil. 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 require in the coming years. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be advancing to environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and water power

For afters

She: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did note that a lot of the people in the Arab world were radical, which I didn’t think accurate. 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 Whitechapel, and she said it had been gentrified. Obviously, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I appear out of place. People gaze at me because it’s become very Muslim. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a alternative term – maybe enclave?

Eva: I feel like Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the media as engaging in misconduct. It seems a little bit racist, or xenophobic

Takeaway

Steve: I think we parted on good terms. We had a embrace at the train stop

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