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Introducing the Individuals

Steve, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Former insurance professional

Voting record: Usually Conservative, apart from when he resided 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”

Evie, 25, the capital

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her home country, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her longest trip was half a year, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

Initial impressions

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

Steve: She came across as a very intelligent, well-spoken, pleasant person

She: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, pasta with fungi, and a creamy dessert thing, it was delicious

The big beef

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that British people who already live here, including non-white Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are arriving. However I just disagree that the figures are that bad

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I believe that authorities have used immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Pay are kept low, so taxes have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on innovation

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and abroad when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about EU labor migrants – people could arrive in the UK and receive solely the wage of the country they came from

Steve: Macron spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in 2018. Previously, posted workers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; later it’s been service industry, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Common ground

He: It would be ideal to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, 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 oil and gas profits soared after Ukraine started, they used that money to develop eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to proceed. He was supportive of continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll need in the future. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be advancing to environmentally friendly options, windfarms and hydro

For afters

She: We touched on Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about extremism coming here – he did note that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on faith

He: I hail from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been modernized. Obviously, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I appear out of place. People stare at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she objects to the term, to her it denotes deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a alternative term – maybe community?

Eva: I believe that Muslim people are really overrepresented in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It seems a little bit discriminatory, or xenophobic

Takeaway

Steve: I think we parted on good terms. We had a hug at the station

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