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Meeting the Participants

Stephen, 64, Canvey Island

Occupation: Former underwriter

Political history: Typically Conservative, apart from when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His focus in insurance was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re discussing evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have opened the missile silos”

Evie, 25, London

Profession: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her home country, New Zealand, she supported both progressive parties

Interesting fact: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her longest trip was six months, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

For starters

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

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

She: I had a caprese salad, pasta with fungi, and a rich sweet treat, it was delicious

Key disagreement

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that UK residents who are native to the area, including non-white Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are entering. However I just disagree that the numbers are that bad

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. 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 kept low, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on innovation

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and abroad when it happened. He explained it to me in a new light. He told me about EU labor migrants – candidates could arrive in the UK and receive solely the wage of the their nation of origin

He: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in 2018. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undermining local employees. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were imported; since then it’s been service industry, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Common ground

He: It would be great to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, I value fresh atmosphere, I appreciate rural areas. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their oil and gas profits skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to develop green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to proceed. He was in favour of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity we’ll need in the coming years. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be advancing to environmentally friendly options, windfarms and water power

For afters

She: We touched on Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about extremism coming here – he did note that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were extremist, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on faith

He: I hail from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been modernized. Naturally, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I appear out of place. 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 Eastern European roots – 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?

She: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It seems a little bit racist, or xenophobic

Takeaway

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

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