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Meeting the Individuals

Steve, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Occupation: Former insurance professional

Political history: Typically Conservative, apart from when he resided in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the Social Democratic Party

Amuse bouche: His focus in insurance was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re planning evacuating people from South Korea because the DPRK have activated the weapon systems”

Evie, 25, London

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her native land, Aotearoa, she supported both progressive parties

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

For starters

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

He: She seemed like a very intelligent, well-spoken, pleasant person

She: I had a caprese salad, pasta with fungi, and a rich sweet treat, it was delicious

Key disagreement

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that UK residents who are native to the area, including non-white Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the essential services, because more and more people are arriving. Whereas I just don’t think the numbers are that bad

He: I’m for qualified migrants, 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 can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Wages are kept low, so levies have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on child support, on schooling, on innovation

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

He: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Before that, posted workers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were imported; since then it’s been hospitality, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Sharing plate

He: It would be great to have a alternative power, 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 Norway?” Their oil and gas profits soared after the conflict began, they allocated those funds to develop eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s not a good way to proceed. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll require in the future. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, turbine fields and hydro

For afters

She: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did note that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were extremist, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions based on faith

Steve: I hail 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: populated by professionals. But when I go down that local 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 Eastern European roots – she doesn’t like that word, to her it denotes deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe community?

She: I feel like followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It appears a little bit racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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

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