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Meeting the Participants

Steve, 64, Canvey Island

Profession: Retired insurance professional

Voting record: Typically Tory, except when he resided in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the Social Democratic Party

Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting 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 North Koreans have activated the weapon systems”

Evie, twenty-five, London

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

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

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

For starters

She: Steve appeared focused on enjoying the meal, to be receptive

He: She came across as a very bright, articulate, pleasant person

Eva: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, pasta with fungi, and a rich sweet treat, it was very good

Key disagreement

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that British people who are native to the area, including non-white Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are arriving. However I just disagree that the figures are that bad

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I maintain that governments have exploited 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 child support, on schooling, on innovation

She: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was 16 and not living here when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about EU labor migrants – people could arrive in the UK and only be paid the wage of the country they came from

Steve: The French president spent two years getting the EU to do away with the system; it was revised in 2018. Previously, posted workers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were imported; since then 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 international colleagues

Sharing plate

He: It would be great to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, I value fresh atmosphere, 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 soared after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to build green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to go about things. He was in favour of maintaining domestic drilling for the small amount we’ll need in the future. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards environmentally friendly options, windfarms and water power

Dessert topics

Eva: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did note that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were extremist, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on faith

Steve: I come 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: populated by professionals. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I look like a foreigner. People gaze at me because it’s become very Muslim. 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 denotes 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 followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It appears a little bit racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

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