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Introducing the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Retired underwriter

Political history: Typically Tory, except when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and supported the Social Democratic Party

Amuse bouche: His specialty in insurance was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing rescuing people from South Korea because the DPRK have activated the weapon systems”

Evie, 25, London

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her native land, New Zealand, she supported both progressive parties

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a significant duration to be at sea

For starters

She: Steve appeared there to have a nice time, to be open

Steve: She came across as a very bright, articulate, nice person

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

The big beef

Eva: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that UK residents who are native to the area, not just Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because more and more people are arriving. Whereas I just disagree that the figures are that bad

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I believe that governments have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Wages are suppressed, so taxes have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on child support, 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 explained it to me in a new light. He told me about “posted workers” – candidates could arrive in the UK and receive solely the salary of the their nation of origin

Steve: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the system; it was reformed in 2018. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undermining local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; later it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Sharing plate

He: 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 appreciate rural areas. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after the conflict began, they allocated those funds to build green infrastructure

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 need in the coming years. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be advancing to environmentally friendly options, windfarms and water power

For afters

She: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did note that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on religion

He: 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: populated by professionals. But when I go down that local market, I appear out of place. People stare at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she objects to the term, to her it implies poverty. 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 news outlets as doing things wrong. It seems a little bit racist, or xenophobic

Conclusion

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

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