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Introducing the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Occupation: Retired underwriter

Voting record: Typically Conservative, except when he resided in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the SDP

Amuse bouche: His specialty in insurance was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re planning evacuating people from South Korea because the North Koreans have opened the missile silos”

Evie, 25, London

Profession: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her home country, Aotearoa, she supported both Labour and Green

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

For starters

Eva: Steve seemed there to have a nice time, to be receptive

Steve: She seemed like a very intelligent, articulate, nice person

She: I had a caprese salad, pasta with fungi, and a rich sweet treat, it was very good

Key disagreement

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that British people who already live here, not just Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because more and more people are entering. Whereas I just don’t think the numbers are that bad

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I maintain that authorities have used immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Wages are suppressed, so levies have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on childcare, on schooling, on innovation

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and not living here when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a new light. He told me about EU labor migrants – candidates could arrive in the UK and receive solely the wage of the their nation of origin

Steve: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was reformed in 2018. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undermining British workers. 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 earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Common ground

Steve: It would be great to have a different energy source, transition from fossil fuels. I disapprove of environmental harm, I love the clean air, I appreciate rural areas. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their oil and gas profits 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 proceed. He was in favour of maintaining domestic drilling for the small amount we’ll need in the future. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and water power

Dessert topics

Eva: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did note that a lot of the people in the Arab world were radical, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions 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 that local market, I appear out of place. 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 Eastern European roots – she doesn’t like that word, to her it implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a alternative term – maybe community?

She: I believe that followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the media as engaging in misconduct. It appears a somewhat discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

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

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