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Introducing the Individuals

Steve, 64, Canvey Island

Profession: Retired underwriter

Political history: Typically Conservative, except when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and supported the SDP

Amuse bouche: His specialty in insurance was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re planning rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have activated the weapon systems”

Eva, twenty-five, the capital

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her native land, New Zealand, she supported both Labour and Green

Interesting fact: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a long time to be on a boat

For starters

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

He: She came across as a very intelligent, articulate, pleasant 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 reduced. He thinks that UK residents who already live here, including non-white Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the things that they need, because more and more people are arriving. However I just don’t think the figures are that bad

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I maintain that governments have used immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Pay are kept low, so taxes have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on childcare, on schooling, on technology

She: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and not living here when it occurred. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He told me about “posted workers” – candidates could arrive in the UK and receive solely the wage of the country they came from

Steve: Macron 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 undermining local employees. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were imported; later it’s been service industry, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than international colleagues

Sharing plate

He: It would be great to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, I love the clean air, I appreciate rural areas. 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 build green infrastructure

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s not a good way to go about things. He was in favour of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity 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 water power

For afters

She: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did note that a many individuals in the Arab world were extremist, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on religion

Steve: I hail from the East End. 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 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 theirs.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe community?

She: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It seems a little bit discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

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

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