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Meeting the Individuals

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Former insurance professional

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

Amuse bouche: His focus in insurance was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re planning rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have opened the missile silos”

Evie, twenty-five, London

Profession: Psychology graduate

Political history: In her home country, New Zealand, she voted a combination of Labour and Green

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

For starters

She: Steve appeared focused on enjoying the meal, to be receptive

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

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

The big beef

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that British people who are native to the area, including non-white Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much 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 qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I maintain that authorities have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Pay 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

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and not living here when it happened. He clarified it to me in a new light. He informed me about “posted workers” – candidates could arrive in the UK and only be paid the salary of the country they came from

Steve: Macron spent two years getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undermining local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were imported; since then 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

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, I love the clean air, 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 allocated those funds 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 coming years. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be advancing to greener solutions, windfarms and hydro

Dessert topics

She: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did mention that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s discriminatory 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 gentrified. Obviously, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I look like a foreigner. People stare 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 objects to the term, to her it implies deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a alternative term – maybe enclave?

Eva: I believe that followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It appears a little bit racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

He: I think we separated amicably. We had a hug at the train stop

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