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Introducing the Individuals

Stephen, sixty-four, Essex

Occupation: Former insurance professional

Voting record: Typically Conservative, except when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His focus in insurance was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re discussing rescuing people from South Korea because the North Koreans have activated the weapon systems”

Eva, twenty-five, the capital

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Political history: In her native land, New Zealand, she voted a combination of Labour and Green

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was half a year, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

Initial impressions

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

He: She seemed like a very bright, articulate, nice person

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

Key disagreement

Eva: He was certainly 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. However I just disagree that the figures are that bad

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I believe that authorities have exploited immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Pay are suppressed, so taxes have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on childcare, on education, on innovation

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was 16 and not living here when it happened. He explained it to me in a new light. He told me about “posted workers” – people could come here and receive solely the salary of the their nation of origin

Steve: Macron spent two years getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was revised in 2018. Previously, posted workers coming in were undermining local employees. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were imported; later it’s been hospitality, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Sharing plate

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 love the countryside. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their oil and gas profits soared after the conflict began, they used that money to develop green infrastructure

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to go about things. He was in favour of maintaining domestic drilling for the small amount 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 advancing to environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and water power

Dessert topics

She: We touched on Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did mention that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were extremist, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on religion

Steve: I come from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been gentrified. Naturally, I would say that: full of yuppies. 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 “ghetto”. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it implies deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe community?

Eva: I feel like Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the media as engaging in misconduct. It appears a somewhat discriminatory, or xenophobic

Takeaway

He: 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