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Meeting the Individuals

Steve, sixty-four, Essex

Profession: Retired insurance professional

Voting record: Usually Conservative, apart from when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the Social Democratic Party

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

Eva, 25, the capital

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her home country, New Zealand, she voted a combination of 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 on a boat

Initial impressions

Eva: Steve seemed focused on enjoying the meal, to be receptive

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

Eva: I had a caprese salad, mushroom pasta, and a rich sweet treat, it was very good

The big beef

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that UK residents who are native to the area, including non-white Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because more and more people are entering. However I just don’t think the numbers are so problematic

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I believe that governments have used immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Wages are suppressed, so taxes have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on childcare, on schooling, on technology

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was sixteen and not living here when it happened. He clarified it to me in a new light. He told me about EU labor migrants – people could arrive in the UK and receive solely the salary of the country they came from

He: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was revised in 2018. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were imported; since then it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

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 love the countryside. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their energy revenues soared after the conflict began, they used that money to build green infrastructure

She: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to go about things. He was in favour of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity we’ll require in the coming years. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be advancing to greener solutions, windfarms and water power

Dessert topics

She: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, 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 didn’t think fair. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on faith

He: I come from the eastern part of London. 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 stare at me because it’s become very Muslim. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word segregated area. 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 different word – maybe enclave?

She: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the media as doing things wrong. It appears a little bit racist, or xenophobic

Conclusion

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

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