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Meeting the Participants

Stephen, 64, Canvey Island

Profession: Former underwriter

Voting record: Typically Conservative, apart from when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the Social Democratic Party

Amuse bouche: His focus in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re discussing rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have opened the missile silos”

Evie, 25, the capital

Profession: Graduate in psychology

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

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was half a year, which is a significant duration to be at sea

For starters

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

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

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

The big beef

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that UK residents who are native to the area, including non-white Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the essential services, because more and more people are arriving. However I just disagree that the numbers are that bad

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I believe that governments have used immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Pay are suppressed, so levies have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on child support, on education, on technology

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and not living here when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He told me about “posted workers” – candidates could arrive in the UK and receive solely the salary of the country they came from

He: The French president spent two years getting the EU to do away with the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Previously, posted workers coming in were undermining British workers. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were imported; since then it’s been service industry, agriculture. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Sharing plate

He: It would be great to have a alternative power, transition from fossil fuels. 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 energy revenues soared after Ukraine started, they used that money to build green infrastructure

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 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

For afters

She: We touched on Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did note that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s discriminatory 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. Obviously, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I look like a foreigner. 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 objects to the term, to her it implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe enclave?

Eva: I believe that Muslim people are really overrepresented in the media as engaging in misconduct. It appears a little bit discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

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