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Introducing the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Occupation: Retired insurance professional

Voting record: Typically Tory, except when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His focus in underwriting was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re planning evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have activated the weapon systems”

Evie, twenty-five, London

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her home country, Aotearoa, she supported both progressive parties

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked 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 focused on enjoying the meal, to be receptive

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

She: I had a caprese salad, pasta with fungi, and a creamy dessert thing, it was delicious

Key disagreement

Eva: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that UK residents who already live here, including non-white 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

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I believe that authorities have used immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Wages are kept low, so levies have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on childcare, on schooling, on innovation

Eva: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and abroad when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about “posted workers” – candidates could come here and receive solely the salary of the country they came from

He: Macron spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were imported; later it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than international colleagues

Sharing plate

He: It would be great to have a different energy source, transition from fossil fuels. I don’t like pollution, I value fresh atmosphere, I appreciate rural areas. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their oil and gas profits soared after Ukraine started, they used that money to develop green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to proceed. He was supportive of continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll require in the future. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, windfarms and hydro

Dessert topics

Eva: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did note that a many individuals in the Arab world were extremist, which I didn’t think accurate. 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 Whitechapel, and she said it had been gentrified. Naturally, 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 Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe community?

She: I believe that Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the media as engaging in misconduct. It appears a somewhat discriminatory, or xenophobic

Conclusion

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

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