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Introducing the Individuals

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Retired underwriter

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

Interesting fact: His specialty in insurance was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re discussing evacuating people from South Korea because the North Koreans have activated the weapon systems”

Evie, 25, London

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her home country, New Zealand, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Interesting fact: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her longest trip was half a year, which is a long time to be at sea

For starters

She: Steve seemed focused on enjoying the meal, to be receptive

Steve: She seemed like a very intelligent, well-spoken, nice person

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

The big beef

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

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I maintain that governments have used 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 child support, on schooling, on innovation

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was sixteen and abroad when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a new light. He told me about EU labor migrants – people could come here and receive solely the wage of the country they came from

Steve: The French president spent two years getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; since then it’s been service industry, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Sharing plate

He: It would be great to have a different energy source, transition from fossil fuels. I disapprove of environmental harm, I value fresh atmosphere, I love the countryside. 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 used that money to develop 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 small amount we’ll require in the coming years. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be advancing to greener solutions, turbine fields and hydro

For afters

Eva: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did note that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions based on religion

Steve: I hail from the East End. 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 that local market, I appear out of place. People gaze 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 poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” 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 little bit discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

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

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