Dining across the divide: ‘I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant country with warm beer’

Steve, 64, Canvey Island Occupation Retired underwriter Voting record Always Conservative, except when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and then voted for the SDP Amuse bouche His beat when he worked in insurance was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, 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 Psychology graduate Voting record In her home country, New Zealand, she voted a combination of Labour and Green Amuse bouche Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her longest trip 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. Eva I had a caprese salad, mushroom pasta and a creamy dessert thing, it was very good. The big beef Eva He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that British people who already live here, not just white British, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because more and more people are arriving. Whereas I just don’t think the numbers are that bad. Related: Dining across the divide: ‘I was expecting some leftist, anti-capitalist, socialist Guardianista’ Steve I’m for skilled immigration, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I believe that governments have used immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Wages are kept low, so taxes have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on childcare, on education, on technology. Eva I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was 16 and not living here when it happened. He explained it to me in a new light. He told me about “posted workers” – people could come here and only be paid the wage of the country they came from. Steve Macron spent two years getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was reformed in 2018. Before that, posted workers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were brought in; since then it’s been hospitality, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries. Sharing plate Steve It would be great to have a different energy source, 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 Norway?” Their oil and gas profits soared after Ukraine started, they used that money to build green infrastructure. Eva So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s not a good way to go about things. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the small amount we’ll need in the future. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, windfarms and hydro. For afters Eva We touched on Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about extremism coming here – he did mention that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were extremist, which I didn’t think was fair. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on religion. Steve I come from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been gentrified. 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 had a little look at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it denotes poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe enclave? Eva I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the media as doing things wrong. It seems a little bit racist, or xenophobic. Takeaway Steve I think we parted on good terms. We had a hug at the station. Eva We both said that we’d had a lovely time. Additional reporting: Kitty Drake • Eva and Steve ate at Faros in London W1 Want to meet someone from across the divide? Find out how to take part