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Meeting the Individuals

Stephen, 64, Essex

Occupation: Retired insurance professional

Voting record: Typically Conservative, except when he resided in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the SDP

Interesting fact: His specialty in underwriting was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re discussing evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have activated the weapon systems”

Eva, 25, London

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her home country, New Zealand, she supported both Labour and Green

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

Initial impressions

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

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

Eva: I had a caprese salad, mushroom pasta, and a rich sweet treat, it was very good

Key disagreement

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that UK residents who are native to the area, not just white British, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are entering. However I just don’t think the figures are so problematic

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I believe that authorities have exploited immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Wages are suppressed, so levies have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on childcare, on education, on technology

She: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and abroad when it happened. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about EU labor migrants – candidates could arrive in the UK and receive solely the wage of the their nation of origin

He: Macron spent two years getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undermining British workers. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were imported; later it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Common ground

He: It would be ideal 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 the Scandinavian nation?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they used that money to develop eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to proceed. He was supportive of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity we’ll need in the coming years. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, windfarms and water power

For afters

Eva: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did note that a lot of the people in the Arab world were extremist, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on faith

Steve: I hail from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been modernized. Naturally, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down that local market, I look like a foreigner. People gaze 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 Eastern European roots – she objects to the term, 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?

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

Conclusion

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

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