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Meeting the Participants

Stephen, 64, Canvey Island

Profession: Retired underwriter

Voting record: Usually Tory, apart from when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the SDP

Interesting fact: His focus in insurance was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re discussing rescuing people from South Korea because the DPRK have opened the weapon systems”

Eva, 25, London

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her native land, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a long time to be on a boat

Initial impressions

She: Steve seemed focused on enjoying the meal, to be open

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

She: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, mushroom pasta, 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 are native to the area, including non-white Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are entering. However I just don’t think the figures are that bad

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I believe that authorities have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Wages are kept low, so taxes have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on child support, on education, on innovation

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and abroad when it happened. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about “posted workers” – people could arrive in the UK and only be paid the salary of the country they came from

Steve: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in 2018. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; later it’s been service industry, agriculture. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Common ground

He: It would be great to have a different energy source, transition from fossil fuels. I don’t like pollution, I love the clean air, I appreciate rural areas. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they used that money to build eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to go about things. He was supportive of continuing our own oil exploration for the small amount we’ll require in the coming years. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be advancing to environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and water power

Dessert topics

Eva: We touched on Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did mention that a many individuals in the Arab world were extremist, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on faith

He: I hail from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been modernized. Naturally, 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 very Muslim. She gave a slight glance 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 agreed to use a alternative term – maybe enclave?

She: I feel like Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the media as engaging in misconduct. It appears a little bit discriminatory, or xenophobic

Takeaway

He: I think we parted on good terms. We had a embrace at the station

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