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Introducing the Individuals

Stephen, 64, Essex

Profession: Former insurance professional

Political history: Usually Tory, except when he resided 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 far from it when you’re planning evacuating people from South Korea because the North Koreans have activated the weapon systems”

Eva, twenty-five, the capital

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her native land, New Zealand, she supported both progressive parties

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her longest trip was six months, which is a significant duration to be at sea

Initial impressions

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

Steve: She came across as a very bright, articulate, nice person

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

Key disagreement

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that British people who are native to the area, not just Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because more and more people are entering. However 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 believe that authorities have used immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Wages are kept low, so levies have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on innovation

Eva: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and not living here when it occurred. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He told me about EU labor migrants – candidates could come here and only be paid the salary of the their nation of origin

He: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was revised in 2018. Before that, posted workers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were brought in; since then it’s been service industry, agriculture. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than international colleagues

Common ground

He: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, 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 skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they used that money to develop eco-friendly systems

She: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. 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 future. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, turbine fields and water power

For afters

Eva: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, 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 didn’t think accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on faith

Steve: I come 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: full of yuppies. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I appear out of place. People stare at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it denotes deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I consented to substitute a alternative term – maybe community?

She: I believe that Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the media as doing things wrong. It appears a little bit racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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

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