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Introducing the Individuals

Steve, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Former insurance professional

Voting record: Typically Tory, apart from when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and supported the Social Democratic Party

Amuse bouche: His focus in insurance was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re planning rescuing people from South Korea because the DPRK have activated the weapon systems”

Evie, 25, the capital

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her native land, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a long time to be on a boat

Initial impressions

She: Steve seemed there to have a nice time, to be receptive

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

Eva: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, mushroom pasta, and a rich sweet treat, it was very good

The big beef

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that British people who already live here, including non-white Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are entering. However I just don’t think the figures 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 kept low, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on childcare, on education, on innovation

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

He: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the system; it was revised in 2018. Previously, posted workers coming in were undermining local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were brought in; since then it’s been hospitality, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be great to have a alternative power, come off of oil. 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 energy revenues soared after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to develop green infrastructure

She: 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 need in the future. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be moving towards environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and hydro

For afters

She: We touched on Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about extremism coming here – he did mention that a lot of the people in the Arab world were extremist, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on faith

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 look like a foreigner. People gaze at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she objects to the term, to her it denotes poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe enclave?

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

Conclusion

He: I think we separated amicably. We had a embrace at the train stop

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