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Introducing the Participants

Steve, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Retired insurance professional

Voting record: Typically Conservative, apart from when he resided in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the SDP

Interesting fact: His specialty in underwriting was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re planning rescuing people from South Korea because the DPRK have opened the weapon systems”

Evie, 25, London

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her home country, New Zealand, she voted a combination of Labour and Green

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked 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

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

She: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, mushroom pasta, and a creamy dessert thing, it was very good

The big beef

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that UK residents who already live here, including non-white white British, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because more and more people are arriving. However I just disagree that the figures are that bad

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I believe that authorities have exploited immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without raising wages. Wages are kept low, so taxes have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on innovation

She: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and not living here when it happened. He clarified it to me in a new light. He informed 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 do away with the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Before that, posted workers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were brought in; since then it’s been service industry, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be great to have a alternative power, transition from fossil fuels. 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 Norway?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they used that money to develop eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s not a good way to proceed. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll need in the coming years. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, turbine fields and hydro

Dessert topics

Eva: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did note that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were extremist, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on religion

He: I come from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been gentrified. Obviously, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down Chrisp Street 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 doesn’t like that word, to her it implies deprivation. 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 overrepresented in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It appears a somewhat discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

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