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Meeting the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Occupation: Retired insurance professional

Voting record: Typically Conservative, except when he resided in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the Social Democratic Party

Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re planning rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have opened the missile silos”

Eva, twenty-five, the capital

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her native land, Aotearoa, she supported both Labour and Green

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a long time to be on a boat

For starters

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

Steve: She seemed like a very intelligent, well-spoken, pleasant person

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

The big beef

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that British people who are native to the area, including non-white white British, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because more and more people are arriving. However I just disagree that the numbers are that bad

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I maintain that governments have used immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Wages are kept low, so taxes have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on technology

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and not living here when it happened. He clarified it to me in a new light. He informed 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 undercutting local employees. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were imported; since then it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Common ground

He: It would be great to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, I love the clean air, I appreciate rural areas. 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 build green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s not a good way to go about things. He was in favour of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity we’ll require in the future. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and hydro

Dessert topics

Eva: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did note that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were extremist, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions based on faith

He: I come from the East End. 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 stare at me because it’s become very Muslim. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she objects to the term, to her it denotes deprivation. 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 doing things wrong. It seems a somewhat racist, 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