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Introducing the Individuals

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Former underwriter

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

Amuse bouche: His specialty in insurance was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing rescuing people from South Korea because the North Koreans have opened the weapon systems”

Eva, 25, London

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her native land, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of Labour and Green

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was half a year, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

For starters

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

He: She came across as a very intelligent, well-spoken, nice person

She: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, mushroom pasta, and a creamy dessert thing, it was very good

The big beef

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that British people who already live here, including non-white Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the essential services, because more and more people are arriving. Whereas I just don’t think the figures are that bad

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I believe that authorities have used immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Pay are kept low, so taxes have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on childcare, on education, on technology

Eva: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was sixteen and abroad when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He told me about “posted workers” – people could come here and only be paid the salary of the country they came from

Steve: The French president spent two years getting the EU to do away with the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Before that, posted workers coming in were undermining British workers. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; later it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She grasped 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 ideal to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, I love the clean air, I appreciate rural areas. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their energy revenues soared after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to develop green infrastructure

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 future. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be advancing to greener solutions, windfarms and water power

For afters

Eva: We touched on Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did mention that a many individuals in the Arab world were radical, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions based on religion

Steve: I hail from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been gentrified. Naturally, 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 had a little look at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. 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 theirs.” I agreed to use a alternative term – maybe enclave?

Eva: I feel like followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the media as engaging in misconduct. It appears a somewhat racist, or xenophobic

Takeaway

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

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