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Introducing the Individuals

Steve, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Occupation: Retired underwriter

Voting record: Typically Conservative, except when he resided in a left-leaning London borough and supported the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His specialty in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re planning rescuing people from South Korea because the North Koreans have opened the missile silos”

Evie, 25, London

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her home country, New Zealand, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her longest trip was half a year, which is a significant duration to be at sea

Initial impressions

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

Steve: She seemed like a very intelligent, articulate, pleasant person

She: I had a caprese salad, mushroom pasta, and a creamy dessert thing, it was delicious

Key disagreement

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that British people who are native to the area, including non-white Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are arriving. However I just disagree that the figures are so problematic

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I believe that governments have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Wages are suppressed, so levies have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on childcare, on education, on innovation

Eva: 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 different perspective. He informed me about EU labor migrants – candidates could come here and receive solely the wage of the country they came from

He: The French president spent two years getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was revised in 2018. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; since then it’s been service industry, agriculture. She understood that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Sharing plate

He: It would be great to have a different energy source, transition from fossil fuels. I don’t like pollution, I love the clean air, I love the countryside. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their oil and gas profits skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to build 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 continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll need in the future. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be advancing to environmentally friendly options, windfarms and water power

For afters

Eva: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did mention that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions based on faith

Steve: I hail from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been gentrified. Naturally, 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 predominantly Islamic. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she objects to the term, to her it denotes deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe community?

Eva: I believe that followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It seems a little bit discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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

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