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Introducing the Individuals

Steve, 64, Essex

Profession: Retired underwriter

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

Interesting fact: His specialty in insurance was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re planning evacuating people from South Korea because the North Koreans have opened the weapon systems”

Eva, 25, the capital

Profession: Psychology graduate

Political history: In her home country, New Zealand, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her longest trip was half a year, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

Initial impressions

She: Steve appeared there to have a nice time, to be open

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

Eva: I had a caprese salad, pasta with fungi, and a rich sweet treat, it was very good

Key disagreement

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that British people who already live here, including non-white white British, face limited access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are entering. However I just disagree that the figures are so problematic

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I maintain that governments have used immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Pay are suppressed, so taxes have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on technology

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was sixteen and abroad when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a new light. He informed me about EU labor migrants – candidates could arrive in the UK and receive solely the wage of the country they came from

Steve: Macron spent two years getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was revised in 2018. Before that, posted workers coming in were undermining local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were imported; later it’s been service industry, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than international colleagues

Common ground

He: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, transition from fossil fuels. 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 oil and gas profits soared after the conflict began, they allocated those funds to develop green infrastructure

She: 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 limited quantity we’ll need in the future. I partially concur 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 briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did note that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on religion

Steve: 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: full of yuppies. But when I go down that local market, I appear out of place. People gaze at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she objects to the term, to her it denotes poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I consented to substitute a alternative term – maybe community?

Eva: I believe that Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the media as doing things wrong. It appears a somewhat racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

Steve: I think we separated amicably. We had a hug at the station

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