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Introducing the Individuals

Steve, 64, Essex

Profession: Retired insurance professional

Voting record: Usually Tory, apart from when he resided in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the Social Democratic Party

Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re planning rescuing people from South Korea because the North Koreans have opened the weapon systems”

Eva, 25, the capital

Profession: Psychology graduate

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

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

Initial impressions

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

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

She: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, mushroom pasta, and a rich sweet treat, it was very good

Key disagreement

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that UK residents who already live here, not just Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the essential services, because more and more people are arriving. Whereas I just don’t think the figures are so problematic

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I believe that governments have exploited immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Pay are suppressed, so levies have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on childcare, on education, on technology

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and abroad when it happened. He explained it to me in a new light. He told me about “posted workers” – people could arrive in the UK and receive solely the salary of the country they came from

Steve: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the system; it was reformed in 2018. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were imported; since then it’s been hospitality, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Sharing plate

He: It would be great to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, I value fresh atmosphere, I appreciate rural areas. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their oil and gas profits skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to build eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to proceed. He was supportive of continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll need in the future. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be advancing to greener solutions, windfarms and water power

For afters

Eva: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did mention that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were extremist, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on religion

Steve: I come 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: full of yuppies. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I look like a foreigner. People stare at me because it’s become very Muslim. 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 poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe enclave?

She: I believe that followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the media as engaging in misconduct. It appears a little bit discriminatory, or xenophobic

Conclusion

Steve: I think we separated amicably. We had a hug at the station

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