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Introducing the Individuals

Steve, 64, Canvey Island

Occupation: Former insurance professional

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

Amuse bouche: His focus in insurance was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re planning rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have opened the missile silos”

Evie, twenty-five, London

Profession: Psychology graduate

Political history: In her home country, New Zealand, she supported both Labour and Green

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

Initial impressions

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

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

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

The big beef

Eva: He was certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that UK residents who are native to the area, including non-white Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are entering. However I just disagree that the numbers are so problematic

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 authorities have used immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Pay are kept low, so levies have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on innovation

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was 16 and not living here when it occurred. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about “posted workers” – candidates could come here and only be paid the salary of the their nation of origin

Steve: The French president spent two years getting the EU to do away with the system; it was revised in 2018. Before that, posted workers coming in were undermining British workers. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; since then 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

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, I value fresh atmosphere, 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 green infrastructure

She: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s not a good way to go about things. He was supportive of continuing our own oil exploration for the small amount we’ll need in the future. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, windfarms and hydro

Dessert topics

Eva: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – 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 religion

He: I hail from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been modernized. Obviously, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I appear out of place. People stare at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – 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 different word – maybe community?

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

Takeaway

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

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