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Meeting the Individuals

Stephen, 64, Essex

Occupation: Former insurance professional

Political history: Usually Conservative, apart from when he resided in a left-leaning London borough and supported the SDP

Amuse bouche: His focus in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re planning rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have activated the weapon systems”

Eva, 25, London

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her home country, Aotearoa, she supported both Labour and Green

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

Initial impressions

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

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

She: I had a caprese salad, pasta with fungi, and a creamy dessert thing, it was very good

Key disagreement

Eva: He was certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that UK residents who are native to the area, including non-white white British, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because more and more people are entering. Whereas I just don’t think the numbers are so problematic

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I believe that authorities have used immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Wages are kept low, so taxes 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 Brexit, because I was sixteen and abroad when it happened. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about “posted workers” – people could arrive in the UK and only be paid the wage of the their nation of origin

Steve: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Previously, posted workers coming in were undermining British workers. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were imported; later it’s been service industry, agriculture. She grasped 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 ideal to have a alternative power, transition from fossil fuels. 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 oil and gas profits skyrocketed 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 proceed. He was supportive of maintaining domestic drilling for the small amount we’ll require in the future. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be advancing to environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and hydro

Dessert topics

She: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did note that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were extremist, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments 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 modernized. Naturally, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down that local market, I appear out of place. People gaze at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she doesn’t like that word, to her it denotes poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe enclave?

Eva: I believe that Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It appears a somewhat discriminatory, or xenophobic

Takeaway

He: I think we parted on good terms. We had a embrace at the station

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