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Introducing the Individuals

Stephen, 64, Essex

Occupation: Former insurance professional

Political history: Usually Tory, apart from when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the SDP

Interesting fact: His specialty in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re planning evacuating people from South Korea because the North Koreans have opened the missile silos”

Eva, twenty-five, the capital

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her home country, New Zealand, she supported both progressive parties

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a long time to be at sea

Initial impressions

Eva: Steve appeared focused on enjoying the meal, to be open

Steve: She came across as a very bright, articulate, nice person

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

Key disagreement

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that British people who already live here, not just Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are entering. Whereas I just don’t think the figures are that bad

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I maintain that authorities have exploited immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without raising wages. Wages are kept low, so taxes have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on child support, on education, on innovation

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and not living here when it occurred. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He told me about “posted workers” – people could come here and receive solely the wage of the country they came from

Steve: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the system; it was reformed in 2018. Before that, posted workers coming in were undermining local employees. Under the former PM, it was oil workers 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 earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Common ground

He: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, 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 skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to build green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to go about things. He was supportive of maintaining domestic drilling for the small amount we’ll need in the coming years. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be advancing to environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and water power

Dessert topics

She: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did mention that a many individuals in the Arab world were extremist, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions based on religion

Steve: I come from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, 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 predominantly Islamic. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she objects to the term, to her it denotes poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe community?

She: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the media as doing things wrong. It seems a somewhat racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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