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Introducing the Individuals

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Occupation: Retired underwriter

Voting record: Usually Conservative, apart from when he resided in a left-leaning London borough and supported the SDP

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

Evie, 25, the capital

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her native land, New Zealand, she supported both Labour and Green

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

Initial impressions

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

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

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

The big beef

Eva: He was certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that UK residents who are native to the area, including non-white Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are arriving. However I just disagree that the numbers are so problematic

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I believe that authorities have used immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without raising wages. Wages are kept low, so taxes have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on child support, on education, on technology

She: 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 new light. He informed me about EU labor migrants – candidates could come here and receive solely the wage of the their nation of origin

He: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the system; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were brought in; since then it’s been service industry, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was earning significantly higher than international colleagues

Common ground

He: It would be great to have a different energy source, transition from fossil fuels. 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 Norway?” 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 an unfavorable approach to go about things. He was in favour of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity we’ll require in the future. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, turbine fields and water power

For afters

Eva: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, 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 extremist, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions based on faith

He: I come from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been gentrified. Obviously, 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 denotes deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe enclave?

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

Takeaway

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

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