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Introducing the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Retired insurance professional

Voting record: Usually Tory, apart from when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the SDP

Amuse bouche: His focus in underwriting was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re planning rescuing people from South Korea because the DPRK have activated the weapon systems”

Evie, twenty-five, the capital

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Political history: In her home country, New Zealand, she supported both progressive parties

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was half a year, which is a long time to be on a boat

Initial impressions

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

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

Eva: I had a caprese salad, pasta with fungi, and a creamy dessert thing, it was delicious

Key disagreement

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that British people who are native to the area, not just Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are arriving. However 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 tepid ale. But I believe that authorities have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Pay are kept low, so levies have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on child support, on schooling, on innovation

She: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and not living here when it occurred. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about “posted workers” – people could come here and receive solely the salary of the country they came from

He: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the system; it was reformed in 2018. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undermining British workers. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were imported; later it’s been hospitality, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Common ground

Steve: It would be ideal to have a different energy source, 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 soared after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to develop eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to proceed. He was supportive of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity 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 advancing to greener solutions, windfarms and water power

For afters

Eva: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did mention that a many individuals in the Arab world were radical, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on faith

Steve: I come from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been gentrified. Obviously, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down that local market, I appear out of place. People stare 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 Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it implies deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I consented to substitute a alternative term – maybe community?

Eva: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the media as engaging in misconduct. It appears a little bit racist, or xenophobic

Takeaway

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

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