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Introducing the Participants

Steve, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Retired underwriter

Political history: Usually Conservative, except when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the SDP

Amuse bouche: His specialty in insurance was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re planning evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have opened the missile silos”

Eva, twenty-five, the capital

Profession: Psychology graduate

Political history: In her home country, New Zealand, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was half a year, which is a significant duration to be at sea

For starters

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

Steve: She came across as a very intelligent, articulate, pleasant person

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

Key disagreement

Eva: 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 essential services, because increasing numbers are arriving. However I just don’t think 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 believe that governments have used immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Pay are kept low, so levies have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on child support, 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 occurred. He clarified it to me in a new light. He told me about EU labor migrants – candidates could arrive in the UK and only be paid the wage of the their nation of origin

Steve: Macron spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in 2018. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undermining local employees. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were imported; later it’s been service industry, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be great to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, 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 oil and gas profits soared after the conflict began, they allocated those funds to build eco-friendly systems

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s not a good way to go about things. He was supportive of maintaining domestic drilling for the small amount we’ll require 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 environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and water power

For afters

Eva: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about extremism coming here – he did mention that a many individuals in the Arab world were extremist, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on religion

He: I hail from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been modernized. Obviously, 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 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 their own.” I consented to substitute a alternative term – maybe enclave?

She: I feel like Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It appears a somewhat discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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

She: We both said that we’d had a wonderful evening