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Introducing the Individuals

Steve, 64, Essex

Occupation: Former underwriter

Voting record: Typically Conservative, except when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the Social Democratic Party

Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re planning evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have opened the weapon systems”

Evie, twenty-five, the capital

Profession: Graduate in psychology

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

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her longest trip was half a year, which is a long time to be at sea

Initial impressions

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

Steve: She came across as a very bright, articulate, nice person

Eva: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, 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 reduced. He believes that UK residents who are native to the area, not just Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the essential services, because more and more people are entering. However I just disagree that the figures 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 maintain that authorities have used immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Wages are kept low, so levies have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on child support, on education, on technology

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and abroad when it happened. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about “posted workers” – people could come here and receive solely the salary of the their nation of origin

He: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Before that, posted workers coming in were undermining British workers. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were imported; since then it’s been service industry, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Common ground

He: It would be great to have a different energy source, 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 skyrocketed after the conflict began, they used that money to build green infrastructure

She: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s not a good way to go about things. He was supportive of continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll need in the future. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be advancing to greener solutions, turbine fields and hydro

For afters

Eva: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did mention that a many individuals in the Arab world were radical, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on religion

Steve: I hail from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been gentrified. Obviously, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down that local market, I look like a foreigner. People gaze 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 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?

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

Conclusion

Steve: I think we parted on good terms. We had a embrace at the train stop

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