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Introducing the Participants

Steve, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Former insurance professional

Voting record: Typically Tory, except when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the SDP

Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: People often claim 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 missile silos”

Eva, 25, the capital

Profession: Psychology graduate

Political history: In her native land, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her longest trip was six months, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

Initial impressions

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

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

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

The big beef

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that British people 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 entering. Whereas I just don’t think the numbers 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 authorities have exploited immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Pay are suppressed, so levies have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on childcare, on education, on technology

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge 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 wage of the their nation of origin

He: Macron spent two years getting the EU to do away with the system; it was reformed in 2018. Before that, posted workers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were brought in; later it’s been service industry, agriculture. She grasped 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 ideal to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, 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 skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to build green infrastructure

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to go about things. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration 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, turbine fields and water power

Dessert topics

Eva: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. 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 fair. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions based on religion

He: I hail 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: full of yuppies. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I look like a foreigner. People stare 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 objects to the term, to her it implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I consented to substitute a alternative term – maybe community?

Eva: I believe that Muslim people are really overrepresented in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It appears a little bit discriminatory, or xenophobic

Takeaway

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

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