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Introducing the Participants

Stephen, 64, Canvey Island

Profession: Retired insurance professional

Political history: Typically Tory, except when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and supported the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His focus in underwriting was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re planning rescuing people from South Korea because the North Koreans have activated the missile silos”

Evie, twenty-five, London

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her native land, New Zealand, she supported both progressive parties

Interesting fact: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a long time to be at sea

Initial impressions

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

Steve: She seemed like a very bright, articulate, nice person

Eva: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, mushroom pasta, and a creamy dessert thing, it was very good

Key disagreement

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that UK residents who are native to the area, including non-white Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because more and more people are arriving. Whereas I just don’t think the numbers are so problematic

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I maintain that governments have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Wages are kept low, so levies have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on child support, on education, on innovation

She: I don’t have that much knowledge 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” – people could arrive in the UK and only be paid the salary of the their nation of origin

Steve: The French president spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undermining local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were brought in; since then it’s been hospitality, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be great to have a alternative power, 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 energy revenues soared after the conflict began, they used that money to build green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s not a good way to proceed. He was in favour of maintaining domestic drilling for the small amount 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 Islamophobia, 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 accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions based on religion

Steve: I come from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been modernized. Obviously, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I appear out of place. People stare 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 objects to the term, to her it denotes deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe community?

Eva: I believe that followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the media as doing things wrong. It appears a somewhat racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

He: I think we separated amicably. We had a embrace at the station

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