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Meeting the Individuals

Steve, 64, Essex

Profession: Former underwriter

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

Amuse bouche: His specialty in insurance was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re planning evacuating people from South Korea because the North Koreans have activated the missile silos”

Evie, 25, the capital

Profession: Psychology graduate

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

Interesting fact: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was half a year, which is a long time to be on a boat

For starters

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

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

She: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, pasta with fungi, and a creamy dessert thing, it was delicious

Key disagreement

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 white British, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because more and more people are entering. However I just disagree that the figures are so problematic

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I maintain 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 kept low, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on childcare, on education, on technology

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and not living here when it happened. He clarified it to me in a new light. He told me about “posted workers” – candidates could arrive in the UK and receive solely the wage of the their nation of origin

Steve: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was revised in 2018. Previously, posted workers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were imported; since then it’s been service industry, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Sharing plate

He: It would be great to have a alternative power, 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 soared after the conflict began, they allocated those funds to build green infrastructure

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s not a good way to proceed. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the small amount 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 moving towards environmentally friendly options, windfarms and water power

For afters

She: 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 radical, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on religion

Steve: I come from the East End. 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 appear out of place. People stare at me because it’s become very Muslim. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word segregated area. 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 followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It seems a little bit racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

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

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