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Meeting the Individuals

Stephen, sixty-four, Essex

Profession: Retired insurance professional

Voting record: Typically Conservative, apart from when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and supported the SDP

Interesting fact: His focus in insurance was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re planning evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have opened the missile silos”

Evie, 25, London

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Political history: In her native land, New Zealand, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her longest trip was half a year, which is a long time to be on a boat

Initial impressions

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

He: She came across as a very intelligent, well-spoken, pleasant person

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

Key disagreement

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that British people who are native to the area, including non-white 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 that bad

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I maintain that governments have used immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Wages are kept low, so taxes have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on child support, on schooling, on technology

Eva: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was sixteen and abroad when it occurred. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about EU labor migrants – candidates could come here and only be paid the wage of the their nation of origin

Steve: The French president spent two years getting the EU to do away with the system; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Previously, posted workers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were imported; since then it’s been service industry, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Common ground

He: It would be great to have a different energy source, transition from fossil fuels. I don’t like pollution, I love the clean air, I love the countryside. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their oil and gas profits skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they used that money to develop green infrastructure

She: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to proceed. He was supportive of maintaining domestic drilling for the small amount we’ll need 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 environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and hydro

Dessert topics

She: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did mention that a lot of the people in the Arab world were radical, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions based on faith

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. Obviously, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I appear out of place. People gaze at me because it’s become very Muslim. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it denotes deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I agreed to use a alternative term – maybe enclave?

Eva: I believe that Muslim people are really overrepresented in the media as engaging in misconduct. It appears a somewhat racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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

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