🔗 Share this article

Meeting the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Occupation: Former underwriter

Voting record: Usually Conservative, except when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and supported the SDP

Interesting fact: His focus in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have opened the weapon systems”

Eva, twenty-five, London

Occupation: Psychology graduate

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

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a long time to be at sea

Initial impressions

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

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

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

The big beef

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that UK residents who already live here, not just white British, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are arriving. However I just don’t think the numbers are that bad

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I maintain that authorities have used immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Wages are kept low, so levies have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on child support, on education, on innovation

Eva: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and abroad when it happened. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He told me about EU labor migrants – candidates could arrive in the UK and only be paid the salary of the their nation of origin

He: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the system; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Previously, posted workers coming in were undermining British workers. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were imported; later it’s been service industry, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Sharing plate

He: It would be ideal to have a different energy source, transition from fossil fuels. I disapprove of environmental harm, I value fresh atmosphere, I love the countryside. We found consensus 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 eco-friendly systems

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to go about things. He was supportive of continuing our own oil exploration 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 greener solutions, windfarms and hydro

Dessert topics

She: We touched on 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 prejudiced to make judgments based on faith

Steve: I hail 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 Chrisp Street 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 “ghetto”. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it denotes poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe community?

Eva: I believe that Muslim people are really overrepresented in the media as doing things wrong. It appears a little bit racist, or xenophobic

Takeaway

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

She: We both said that we’d had a wonderful evening