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Introducing the Individuals

Steve, 64, Canvey Island

Profession: Former underwriter

Voting record: Usually Conservative, apart from when he resided in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the SDP

Interesting fact: His specialty in insurance was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re discussing rescuing people from South Korea because the North Koreans have activated the missile silos”

Evie, 25, London

Profession: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her home country, Aotearoa, she supported both progressive parties

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a long time to be at sea

Initial impressions

Eva: Steve seemed there to have a nice time, to be open

He: She seemed like a very bright, well-spoken, pleasant person

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

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 things that they need, because more and more people are entering. Whereas I just disagree that the numbers are that bad

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I maintain that governments have used immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Wages are suppressed, so levies have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on innovation

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was sixteen and not living here when it happened. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He told me about “posted workers” – people could arrive in the UK and only be paid the salary of the country they came from

He: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was reformed in 2018. Before that, posted workers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were imported; since then it’s been service industry, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Common ground

He: It would be ideal 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 Norway?” Their energy revenues soared after the conflict began, they allocated those funds to build eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to go about things. He was supportive of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity we’ll need in the coming years. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be advancing to greener solutions, turbine fields and water power

For afters

She: We touched on Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did note that a many individuals in the Arab world were radical, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on faith

He: I come from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been modernized. Obviously, 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 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 community?

She: I believe that Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the media as engaging in misconduct. It seems a somewhat racist, or xenophobic

Conclusion

He: I think we separated amicably. We had a hug at the station

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