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Meeting the Participants

Stephen, 64, Canvey Island

Occupation: Retired underwriter

Voting record: Usually Tory, except when he resided in a left-leaning London borough and supported the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His focus in underwriting was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re discussing evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have opened the missile silos”

Eva, 25, London

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her home country, Aotearoa, she supported both Labour and Green

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was half a year, which is a significant duration to be at sea

Initial impressions

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

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

She: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, pasta with fungi, and a creamy dessert thing, it was very good

The big beef

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that UK residents who are native to the area, not just white British, face limited access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are arriving. However I just don’t think 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 fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Wages are kept low, so taxes have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on child support, on education, on innovation

She: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was 16 and not living here when it happened. He explained it to me in a new light. He informed me about “posted workers” – candidates could come here and receive solely the wage of the country they came from

Steve: The French president spent two years getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was revised in 2018. Before that, posted workers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; later it’s been service industry, agriculture. She grasped 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 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 the Scandinavian nation?” Their energy revenues soared after the conflict began, they used that money to build eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to proceed. He was in favour of maintaining domestic drilling for the small amount we’ll require 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 hydro

Dessert topics

Eva: We touched on Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did note that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were radical, 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 gentrified. Naturally, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down Chrisp Street 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 Eastern European roots – she doesn’t like that word, to her it implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a alternative term – maybe community?

She: I feel like followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It appears a somewhat discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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

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