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Introducing the Participants

Steve, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Occupation: Retired insurance professional

Voting record: Usually Tory, except when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and supported the SDP

Interesting fact: His focus in underwriting 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 activated the weapon systems”

Evie, twenty-five, London

Profession: Graduate in psychology

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

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her longest trip was six months, which is a long time to be at sea

For starters

Eva: Steve appeared focused on enjoying the meal, to be open

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

Eva: I had a caprese salad, mushroom pasta, and a rich sweet treat, it was very good

The big beef

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that British people who already live here, including non-white white British, face limited access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are entering. However I just disagree that the figures are so problematic

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I maintain that authorities have used immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Pay are kept low, so taxes have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on child support, on education, on technology

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and abroad when it happened. He clarified it to me in a new light. He informed me about EU labor migrants – people could come here and only be paid the wage of the country they came from

Steve: The French president spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was reformed in 2018. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were imported; since then it’s been hospitality, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Common ground

He: It would be ideal to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, I value fresh atmosphere, I love the countryside. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after the conflict began, they used that money to develop eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. 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 greener solutions, windfarms and hydro

Dessert topics

Eva: We touched on 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 fair. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on religion

He: I come from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been gentrified. Naturally, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down that local market, I look like a foreigner. People gaze at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. 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 theirs.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe enclave?

Eva: I feel like followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the media as engaging in misconduct. It appears a little bit racist, or xenophobic

Takeaway

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

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