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Introducing the Participants

Steve, 64, Canvey Island

Occupation: Former underwriter

Voting record: Typically Conservative, apart from when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and supported the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His focus in insurance was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re planning rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have opened the missile silos”

Evie, 25, London

Profession: Psychology graduate

Political history: In her native land, Aotearoa, she supported both progressive parties

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage 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 receptive

He: She seemed like a very bright, well-spoken, pleasant 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 certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that UK residents who are native to the area, not just white British, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are entering. Whereas I just disagree that the figures are so problematic

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I believe that authorities have used immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Wages are suppressed, so levies have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on childcare, on education, on innovation

Eva: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and abroad when it happened. He clarified it to me in a new light. He informed me about EU labor migrants – people 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 abolish the system; it was revised in 2018. Previously, posted workers coming in were undermining local employees. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were brought in; later it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, 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 the Scandinavian nation?” Their oil and gas profits skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to build eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s not a good way to proceed. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the small amount we’ll need in the future. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, windfarms and hydro

For afters

Eva: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about extremism coming here – he did note that a many individuals in the Arab world were extremist, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions based on religion

He: I hail from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, 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 gaze at me because it’s become very Muslim. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she objects to the term, to her it implies poverty. 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 seems a little bit discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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

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