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Meeting the Participants

Stephen, 64, Canvey Island

Occupation: Former underwriter

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

Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re discussing evacuating people from South Korea because the DPRK have opened the weapon systems”

Evie, 25, the capital

Profession: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her home country, New Zealand, she supported both progressive parties

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 at sea

For starters

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

Steve: She seemed like a very intelligent, articulate, pleasant person

Eva: I had a caprese salad, pasta with fungi, and a creamy dessert thing, it was delicious

The big beef

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that UK residents who already live here, including non-white Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the essential services, because more and more people are entering. Whereas I just disagree that the numbers are so problematic

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I maintain that authorities have used immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Wages are kept low, so levies have to be minimized, 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 the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and abroad when it occurred. He explained it to me in a new light. He told me about EU labor migrants – candidates could arrive in the UK and only be paid the salary of the their nation of origin

Steve: The French president spent two years getting the EU to do away with the system; it was reformed in 2018. Previously, posted workers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were imported; later 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

Steve: It would be ideal 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 the Scandinavian nation?” Their energy revenues soared after Ukraine started, they used that money to build eco-friendly systems

Eva: 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 maintaining domestic drilling for the small amount we’ll require in the future. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be advancing to greener solutions, windfarms 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 radical, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on faith

Steve: I hail 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: full of yuppies. But when I go down that local market, I appear out of place. People stare at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she doesn’t like that word, to her it implies deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe community?

She: I feel like followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It seems a little bit discriminatory, or xenophobic

Conclusion

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

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