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Meeting the Individuals

Steve, 64, Canvey Island

Profession: Retired underwriter

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

Interesting fact: His specialty in insurance was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have opened the missile silos”

Evie, 25, the capital

Occupation: Psychology graduate

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

Interesting fact: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a long time to be on a boat

For starters

Eva: Steve seemed focused on enjoying the meal, to be receptive

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

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

The big beef

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that UK residents who already live here, not just white British, face limited access to the essential services, because more and more people are arriving. Whereas I just disagree that the figures are that bad

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 used immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Pay are suppressed, so taxes have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on childcare, on schooling, on innovation

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was 16 and abroad when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He told me about EU labor migrants – candidates could arrive in the UK and only be paid the salary of the country they came from

Steve: The French president spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Previously, posted workers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were brought in; since then it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than international colleagues

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be great to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, 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 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 in favour of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity 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 touched on Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about extremism coming here – he did note 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 come from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been modernized. Obviously, I would say that: populated by professionals. 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 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 consented to substitute a different word – maybe community?

Eva: I feel like Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It appears a little bit racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

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

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