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Meeting the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Retired insurance professional

Political history: Typically Conservative, except when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the SDP

Interesting fact: His specialty in insurance was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re planning evacuating people from South Korea because the North Koreans have activated the weapon systems”

Eva, 25, the capital

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Political history: In her native land, New Zealand, she supported both Labour and Green

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her longest trip was half a year, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

Initial impressions

Eva: Steve appeared focused on enjoying the meal, to be open

Steve: She came across as a very bright, well-spoken, nice person

Eva: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, pasta with fungi, and a rich sweet treat, it was very good

Key disagreement

Eva: He was certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that British people who already live here, not just Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are arriving. Whereas I just don’t think the figures are so problematic

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I believe that governments have used immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Wages are suppressed, so taxes have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on childcare, on education, on technology

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and abroad when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a new light. He informed me about “posted workers” – people could arrive in the UK and only be paid the salary of the their nation of origin

He: Macron spent two years getting the EU to do away with the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Previously, posted workers coming in were undermining local employees. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were imported; since then it’s been service industry, farms. She understood 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, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, I value fresh atmosphere, I love the countryside. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their energy revenues soared after the conflict began, they allocated those funds to develop 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 limited quantity we’ll require in the future. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be moving towards 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 extremist, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on religion

He: I come from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been modernized. Naturally, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I look like a foreigner. People stare at me because it’s become very Muslim. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she objects to the term, to her it implies deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I agreed to use a alternative term – maybe community?

She: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the media as engaging in misconduct. It seems a somewhat discriminatory, or xenophobic

Conclusion

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

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