🔗 Share this article

Meeting the Individuals

Stephen, 64, Essex

Profession: Former insurance professional

Political history: Usually Conservative, apart from when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His focus in insurance was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have opened the weapon systems”

Evie, 25, London

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her home country, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her longest trip was half a year, which is a significant duration to be at sea

Initial impressions

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

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

Eva: I had a caprese salad, pasta with fungi, and a rich sweet treat, it was delicious

The big beef

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that UK residents who already live here, not just Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because more and more people are entering. Whereas I just don’t think the numbers are so problematic

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I maintain that authorities have used immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without raising wages. Pay are kept low, so levies have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on childcare, on education, on innovation

She: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was 16 and abroad when it happened. 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

He: The French president spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in 2018. Previously, posted workers coming in were undermining British workers. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were imported; since then it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She understood that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Common ground

He: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, 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 the conflict began, they used that money to develop eco-friendly systems

She: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s not a good way to proceed. He was supportive of continuing our own oil exploration for the small amount 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 advancing to environmentally friendly options, windfarms and water power

For afters

Eva: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about extremism coming here – he did note that a many individuals in the Arab world were extremist, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on religion

He: I come 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 Chrisp Street market, I appear out of place. People gaze at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a alternative term – maybe enclave?

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

Conclusion

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