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Meeting the Participants

Steve, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Retired underwriter

Political history: Usually Conservative, except when he resided in a left-leaning London borough and supported the Social Democratic Party

Amuse bouche: His focus in underwriting was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re planning rescuing people from South Korea because the North Koreans have activated the missile silos”

Eva, 25, London

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her native land, New Zealand, she voted a combination of Labour and Green

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was half a year, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

For starters

Eva: Steve seemed there to have a nice time, to be open

He: She seemed like a very intelligent, well-spoken, pleasant person

She: 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 UK residents who are native to the area, not just white British, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are entering. 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 homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I believe that authorities have used immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without raising wages. Pay are kept low, so levies have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on childcare, on education, on innovation

She: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was sixteen and not living here when it happened. He explained it to me in a new light. He informed me about “posted workers” – people could come here and only be paid the wage of the country they came from

Steve: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; later it’s been service industry, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be great to have a different energy source, 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 skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds 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 limited quantity we’ll require in the coming years. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, turbine fields and hydro

Dessert topics

She: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about 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 form opinions based on faith

Steve: I hail from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to that district, 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 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 doesn’t like that word, to her it denotes poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe community?

Eva: I believe that Muslim people are really overrepresented in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It seems a somewhat racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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

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