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Introducing the Individuals

Steve, 64, Canvey Island

Occupation: Retired underwriter

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

Amuse bouche: His focus in insurance was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re planning rescuing people from South Korea because the North Koreans have activated the weapon systems”

Evie, twenty-five, the capital

Profession: Psychology graduate

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

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her longest trip was half a year, which is a significant duration to be at sea

Initial impressions

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

He: She came across as a very bright, articulate, pleasant person

Eva: I had a caprese salad, pasta with fungi, and a creamy dessert thing, it was very good

Key disagreement

She: 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 don’t think the figures are so problematic

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I believe that governments have used immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without raising wages. Pay are kept low, so levies have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on childcare, on education, on technology

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was 16 and abroad when it happened. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about “posted workers” – people could arrive in the UK and only be paid the salary of the their nation of origin

Steve: The French president spent two years getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Previously, posted workers coming in were undermining local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; later it’s been service industry, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Common ground

Steve: It would be ideal to have a different energy source, transition from fossil fuels. I disapprove of environmental harm, I value fresh atmosphere, I appreciate rural areas. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their oil and gas profits skyrocketed after the conflict began, they used that money to develop green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to go about things. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll require in the coming years. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be advancing to environmentally friendly options, windfarms and hydro

Dessert topics

Eva: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did mention that a lot of the people in the Arab world were radical, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on religion

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 modernized. 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 very Muslim. 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 implies deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe community?

Eva: I believe that followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the media as doing things wrong. It appears a little bit discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

He: I think we parted on good terms. We had a hug at the station

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