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Meeting the Individuals

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Occupation: Former insurance professional

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

Interesting fact: His specialty in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re discussing evacuating people from South Korea because the North Koreans have opened the missile silos”

Eva, 25, London

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her home country, New Zealand, she supported both progressive parties

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

Eva: Steve seemed there to have a nice time, to be open

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

She: I had a caprese salad, mushroom pasta, and a creamy dessert thing, it was very good

The big beef

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that British people who already live here, including non-white white British, face limited access to the essential services, because more and more people are entering. Whereas I just don’t think the figures are so problematic

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I believe that authorities have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without raising wages. Pay are suppressed, so taxes have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on child support, on education, on technology

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was 16 and not living here when it happened. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about “posted workers” – candidates could come here and receive solely the salary of the country they came from

He: Macron spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in 2018. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were imported; later it’s been service industry, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Common ground

Steve: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, I love the clean air, I love the countryside. We found consensus 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 allocated those funds to build eco-friendly systems

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to go about things. He was supportive of maintaining domestic drilling 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 moving towards greener solutions, windfarms and water power

For afters

She: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did mention that a lot of the people in the Arab world were radical, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on faith

He: 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 Chrisp Street market, I look like a foreigner. 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 Eastern European roots – she doesn’t like that word, to her it denotes deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a alternative term – maybe community?

She: I believe that Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the media as engaging in misconduct. It seems a little bit discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

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

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