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Introducing the Individuals

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Retired 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: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing evacuating people from South Korea because the North Koreans have activated the missile silos”

Evie, 25, the capital

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Political history: In her home country, New Zealand, she supported both Labour and Green

Interesting fact: 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

Initial impressions

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

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

Eva: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, pasta with fungi, and a rich sweet treat, it was very good

The big beef

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that UK residents who are native to the area, including non-white white British, face limited access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are entering. Whereas I just don’t think the numbers are so problematic

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I maintain that authorities have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Wages are suppressed, so levies have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on childcare, on education, on innovation

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and abroad when it happened. He clarified it to me in a new light. He informed me about EU labor migrants – people could arrive in the UK and only be paid the wage of the their nation of origin

Steve: Macron spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was reformed in 2018. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undermining local employees. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were brought in; later it’s been service industry, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

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 agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they used that money to build eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s not a good way to go about things. He was supportive of maintaining domestic drilling for the small amount we’ll require in the coming years. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be moving towards environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and hydro

For afters

Eva: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, 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 radical, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on faith

Steve: I come from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, 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 stare at me because it’s become very Muslim. She had a little look 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 different word – maybe community?

She: I feel like followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It appears a somewhat discriminatory, or xenophobic

Conclusion

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

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