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Introducing the Individuals

Steve, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Occupation: Retired insurance professional

Political history: Usually Conservative, apart from when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and supported the SDP

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

Evie, 25, the capital

Profession: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her home country, New Zealand, she supported both Labour and Green

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her longest trip was half a year, which is a long time to be on a boat

For starters

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

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

Eva: I had a caprese salad, pasta with fungi, and a creamy dessert thing, it was delicious

Key disagreement

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that British people who already live here, not just Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are arriving. However I just don’t think the numbers are so problematic

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I maintain that authorities have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without raising wages. Pay are kept low, so levies have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on technology

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was 16 and not living here when it occurred. He explained it to me in a new light. He informed me about “posted workers” – people could arrive in the UK and only be paid the wage of the country they came from

He: The French president spent two years getting the EU to do away with the system; it was reformed in 2018. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undermining local employees. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were imported; since then it’s been hospitality, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than international colleagues

Common ground

Steve: 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 agreed 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 used that money to develop eco-friendly systems

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s not a good way to proceed. He was supportive of maintaining domestic drilling for the small amount we’ll require in the coming years. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be advancing to greener solutions, turbine fields and hydro

For afters

Eva: 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 many individuals in the Arab world were extremist, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on faith

Steve: I come 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 that local market, I look like a foreigner. People gaze at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She had a little look 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 enclave?

She: I feel like followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the media as engaging in misconduct. It seems a somewhat racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

Steve: I think we parted on good terms. We had a hug at the train stop

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