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Meeting the Individuals

Stephen, 64, Canvey Island

Profession: Former insurance professional

Voting record: Usually Tory, except when he resided in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the SDP

Amuse bouche: His focus in underwriting was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re discussing rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have opened the weapon systems”

Evie, 25, the capital

Profession: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her home country, New Zealand, she voted a combination of Labour and Green

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her longest trip 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 open

He: She came across as a very bright, well-spoken, nice person

She: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, mushroom pasta, and a creamy dessert thing, it was delicious

Key disagreement

Eva: He was certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. 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. However I just don’t think the numbers are so problematic

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I believe that authorities have used immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Wages are kept low, so taxes have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on innovation

She: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was sixteen and not living here when it happened. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He told me about EU labor migrants – people could come here and receive solely the salary of the country they came from

Steve: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the system; it was reformed in 2018. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were imported; later it’s been hospitality, agriculture. 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 ideal to have a different energy source, transition from fossil fuels. I don’t like pollution, I value fresh atmosphere, I love the countryside. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their energy revenues soared after Ukraine started, they used that money 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 small amount we’ll require in the future. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards environmentally friendly options, windfarms and water power

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 many individuals in the Arab world were radical, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on faith

He: I come from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been gentrified. Obviously, 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 very Muslim. She gave a slight glance 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 deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” 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 somewhat racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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

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