🔗 Share this article

Introducing the Individuals

Steve, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Retired underwriter

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

Amuse bouche: His focus in insurance was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re discussing evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have activated the missile silos”

Eva, twenty-five, London

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her home country, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of Labour and Green

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her longest trip 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 open

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

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

Key disagreement

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that British people who are native to the area, not just white British, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are entering. However I just disagree that the figures are so problematic

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I maintain that governments have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without raising wages. Pay are kept low, so levies have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on child support, on education, on technology

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and abroad when it happened. He explained it to me in a new light. He informed me about “posted workers” – candidates could come here and only be paid the salary of the country they came from

Steve: Macron spent two years getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; later it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than international colleagues

Common ground

Steve: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, transition from fossil fuels. I don’t like pollution, 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 Norway?” Their oil and gas profits skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they used that money to build eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s not a good way to go about things. He was supportive of maintaining domestic drilling for the small amount we’ll require in the future. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, turbine fields and hydro

Dessert topics

She: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did note that a many individuals in the Arab world were extremist, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on religion

Steve: I come from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been gentrified. Obviously, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I look like a foreigner. People stare at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she doesn’t like that word, to her it denotes deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe community?

Eva: I believe that followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It seems a somewhat discriminatory, or xenophobic

Conclusion

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

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