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Meeting the Individuals

Steve, 64, Essex

Profession: Former underwriter

Political history: Typically Conservative, apart from when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and supported the Social Democratic Party

Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re planning evacuating people from South Korea because the DPRK have activated the missile silos”

Eva, 25, London

Profession: Psychology graduate

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

Amuse bouche: 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 seemed focused on enjoying the meal, to be open

He: She seemed like a very bright, well-spoken, nice person

She: I had a caprese salad, mushroom pasta, and a creamy dessert thing, it was very good

Key disagreement

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that UK residents who already live here, not just white British, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because more and more people are arriving. Whereas I just disagree that the numbers are so problematic

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I maintain that governments have exploited immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Pay are suppressed, so taxes have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on childcare, on schooling, on innovation

She: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and abroad when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about EU labor migrants – candidates could come here and only be paid the salary of the country they came from

Steve: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; later it’s been service industry, farms. 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

Steve: It would be great to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, I love the clean air, I appreciate rural areas. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to build green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s not a good way to go about things. He was supportive of continuing our own oil exploration 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 moving towards greener solutions, windfarms and hydro

For afters

Eva: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, 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 accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on religion

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: populated by professionals. But when I go down that local market, I appear out of place. 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 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 agreed to use a different word – maybe community?

She: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It appears a little bit racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

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

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