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Introducing the Individuals

Stephen, 64, Canvey Island

Occupation: Former underwriter

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

Interesting fact: His focus in insurance was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re planning rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have activated the missile silos”

Evie, 25, London

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her home country, New Zealand, she voted a combination of Labour and Green

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

Initial impressions

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

He: She seemed like a very bright, articulate, pleasant person

She: I had a caprese salad, mushroom pasta, and a creamy dessert thing, it was delicious

Key disagreement

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that British people who already live here, not just Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are entering. However I just disagree that the figures are that bad

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I maintain that governments have used immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Pay are kept low, so taxes have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on technology

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was 16 and abroad when it occurred. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He told me about “posted workers” – people could come here 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 revised in 2018. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undermining British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were brought in; later it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was earning significantly higher than international colleagues

Common ground

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 Norway?” Their energy revenues soared after the conflict began, they used that money to build eco-friendly systems

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s not a good way to go about things. He was supportive of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity we’ll need 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 water power

Dessert topics

Eva: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did note that a many individuals in the Arab world were radical, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions 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. Naturally, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I look like a foreigner. People gaze at me because it’s become very Muslim. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it denotes poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe community?

She: I feel like followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the media as doing things wrong. It seems a somewhat racist, or xenophobic

Takeaway

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

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