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Introducing the Individuals

Steve, sixty-four, Essex

Occupation: Former insurance professional

Political history: Usually Conservative, except when he resided in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the Social Democratic Party

Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re planning rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have opened the missile silos”

Eva, twenty-five, London

Profession: Psychology graduate

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

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her longest trip was six months, which is a significant duration to be at sea

Initial impressions

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

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

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

Key disagreement

Eva: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that UK residents who already live here, including non-white Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are arriving. Whereas I just don’t think the figures are that bad

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I maintain that governments have used immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Wages are kept low, so taxes have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on child support, on schooling, on technology

She: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and not living here when it happened. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about “posted workers” – people could come here and only be paid the wage of the their nation of origin

Steve: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the system; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Before that, posted workers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; later it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She grasped 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, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, I love the clean air, I love the countryside. We found consensus 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

She: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach 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 kind of agree with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, windfarms and hydro

Dessert topics

Eva: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did note that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were extremist, which I felt was not 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 modernized. Obviously, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down that local market, I appear out of place. 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 Polish-Jewish ancestry – she objects to the term, to her it denotes poverty. 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 news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It seems a somewhat racist, or xenophobic

Takeaway

He: I think we separated amicably. We had a embrace at the train stop

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