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Meeting the Individuals

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Retired underwriter

Voting record: Usually Tory, except when he resided in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His focus in insurance was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing rescuing people from South Korea because the DPRK have activated the weapon systems”

Eva, 25, the capital

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her native land, New Zealand, she supported both Labour and Green

Amuse bouche: 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

For starters

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

Steve: She seemed like a very bright, well-spoken, nice person

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

Key disagreement

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that British people who are native to the area, not just Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are entering. Whereas I just don’t think the numbers are so problematic

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I believe that authorities have used immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Pay are kept low, so taxes have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on childcare, on education, on innovation

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and abroad when it happened. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He told me about EU labor migrants – candidates could come here and receive solely the salary of the country they came from

He: The French president spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Previously, posted workers coming in were undermining local employees. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were brought in; since then it’s been service industry, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be great to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, 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 oil and gas profits skyrocketed after the conflict began, they allocated those funds to build eco-friendly systems

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 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, turbine fields and hydro

For afters

Eva: We touched on Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did mention that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were extremist, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on faith

He: I hail from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been modernized. Naturally, I would say that: full of yuppies. 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 segregated area. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she objects to the term, to her it implies deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe community?

Eva: I feel like followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It appears a somewhat racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

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

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