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Introducing the Individuals

Steve, 64, Canvey Island

Profession: Former underwriter

Voting record: Typically Tory, except when he resided in a left-leaning London borough and supported the SDP

Amuse bouche: His specialty in insurance was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re discussing rescuing people from South Korea because the North Koreans have activated the weapon systems”

Evie, 25, London

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her home country, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of Labour and Green

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked 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 appeared focused on enjoying the meal, to be receptive

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

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

Key disagreement

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that UK residents who already live here, not just Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the essential services, because more and more people are arriving. Whereas I just don’t think the numbers are so problematic

He: 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 governments have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Pay are suppressed, so taxes have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on child support, on education, on technology

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was sixteen and abroad when it occurred. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about EU labor migrants – people could come here and only be paid the salary of the country they came from

Steve: Macron spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Previously, posted workers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were brought in; later it’s been service industry, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Common ground

Steve: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, transition from fossil fuels. 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 energy revenues soared after the conflict began, they used that money to develop green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s not a good way to go about things. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the small amount we’ll require in the coming years. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, windfarms and hydro

For afters

She: We touched on Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did note that a lot of the people in the Arab world were radical, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on faith

He: I hail from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been modernized. 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 very Muslim. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she doesn’t like that word, to her it implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a alternative term – maybe community?

She: I feel like Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It seems a somewhat discriminatory, or xenophobic

Conclusion

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

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