🔗 Share this article

Introducing the Individuals

Steve, 64, Canvey Island

Profession: Retired underwriter

Voting record: Usually Tory, apart from when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His specialty in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re discussing rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have opened the missile silos”

Evie, twenty-five, the capital

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her native land, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a significant duration to be at sea

For starters

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

Steve: She seemed like a very bright, articulate, pleasant person

She: 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 reduced. He thinks that UK residents who already live here, including non-white white British, face limited access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are entering. Whereas I just don’t think the figures are that bad

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I believe that authorities have used immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without raising wages. Wages are suppressed, so taxes have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on childcare, on education, on innovation

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was sixteen and abroad when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a new light. He informed me about EU labor migrants – people could arrive in the UK and receive solely the wage of the their nation of origin

Steve: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in 2018. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were imported; later it’s been service industry, agriculture. She understood that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was earning significantly higher than international colleagues

Common ground

Steve: It would be great to have a alternative power, transition from fossil fuels. I disapprove of environmental harm, I love the clean air, I love the countryside. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they used that money to build eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to go about things. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll require in the future. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be advancing to greener solutions, turbine fields and hydro

Dessert topics

She: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did note that a many individuals in the Arab world were radical, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on religion

Steve: I come from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been modernized. Naturally, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down that local market, I look like a foreigner. People stare at me because it’s become very Muslim. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she objects to the term, to her it implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a alternative term – maybe community?

Eva: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the media as doing things wrong. It seems a somewhat racist, or xenophobic

Takeaway

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

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