Holly, 47, Norfolk
Occupation Co-runs a ski-coaching business
Voting record Would naturally vote Green, but lives in a very Conservative part of the country, so usually Labour
Amuse bouche Has six children, whom she home schools
Nick, 58, Portsmouth
Occupation IT project manager
Voting record Tends to vote for the candidate rather than the party. Voted for Jeremy Corbyn as his constituent, but has also voted Green and independent
Amuse bouche Nick delivered his second child at home. It was so quick there wasn’t time to be nervous, though he did think, “If she isn’t fine, this isn’t a very good place to be.” But she was fine
For starters
Holly My husband had sent me off with the line: “Just don’t get mansplained.” But Nick certainly was not the mansplaining type.
Nick She was friendly and engaging. I have hearing loss, and she got us to move to a table that was quieter.
Holly I’d never had Japanese food before, but he had some experience because his son was interested in all things Japanese.
Nick It was a tasty set menu: shrimp tempura, a wagyu sandwich and a carafe of sake.
The big beef
Holly I definitely feel that proportional representation is a better voting system. First past the post means that you can’t really vote how you would like to vote, and it kind of means all votes aren’t equal. If you wanted to vote for a minority party, your vote effectively has no weight. I think it discourages people who aren’t necessarily avid followers of politics from engaging at all. If you have to vote one way or the other, or it’s pointless, it contributes to low turnout.
Nick Traditionally, I’ve always been against PR, because I think it leads to unstable governments, as you get in Italy, or you get extremists in government – I think that’s what’s happening in Israel at the moment.
Holly He was saying, though, that he was starting to think that PR might lead to a lot less party politics, and head off the polarisation that we seem to have going on at the moment.
Nick One of the reasons we’ve had a Conservative government for the last 13 years is because the SNP hived off all those Labour votes. And, thinking about it, I’ve never lived anywhere where it’s been down to my vote, where I could have changed the outcome.
Sharing plate
Holly One of the hardest aspects of home schooling is how massively people judge you. If, like us, you fell into it, because it was the only thing that worked, you are constantly worried about whether you are doing the right thing. You can get a lot of vitriol from others. But, in fact, Nick’s beef was more with private schools.
Nick All schooling should be state sector. It would give wealthy people more of a vested interest in making sure state schools were better run.
Holly The state sector is seen as second best in our country. Particularly in the middle classes, if your child is struggling at state school, there is a sort of unspoken feeling of, “What do you expect? You should be paying for it.”
Nick It was quite interesting to hear Holly’s experience. She ended up home schooling when the government clamped down and the heads weren’t allowed to have any flexibility around attendance. Teachers should be given the autonomy to allow kids to attend school in a more flexible way.
For afters
Holly Nick feels that we don’t need the monarchy – we can abolish it or at least stop paying them. They’re irrelevant. I feel that it’s not that simple. I suspect that if you started to dismantle it, you’d find that there are many areas of life where the logistics are impossible if you remove the current head of state.
Nick They’re perfectly free to carry on being the royal family, but they shouldn’t be funded by the taxpayer and they shouldn’t be head of state. We had a debate about all that pomp and ceremony, and whether it brings in all the tourists, but I’ve never seen a business case for that.
Takeaways
Holly We got on well. We had quite a lot in common in our families: his wife is a teacher, I trained as a teacher.
Nick It was really nice talking to Holly. I tend to avoid discussing politics with people I don’t know very well, for fear of getting into an argument or offending them. This made me think maybe I should stop avoiding it.
Additional reporting: Kitty Drake
Holly and Nick ate at Taka in London
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