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Introducing the Participants

Steve, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Former insurance professional

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

Amuse bouche: His focus in insurance was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re discussing rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have opened the weapon systems”

Eva, 25, the capital

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her native land, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of Labour and Green

Interesting fact: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her longest trip was half a year, which is a long time to be on a boat

Initial impressions

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

Steve: She came across as a very bright, articulate, pleasant person

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

Key disagreement

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that British people who are native to the area, not just Caucasian Britons, 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

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I believe that authorities have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without raising wages. Pay are kept low, so taxes have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on child support, on schooling, on innovation

She: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was sixteen and not living here when it happened. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about “posted workers” – people could arrive in the UK and receive solely the salary of the country they came from

He: The French president spent two years getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Before that, posted workers coming in were undercutting British workers. 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 international colleagues

Common ground

Steve: It would be great to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, 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 oil and gas profits soared after Ukraine started, they used that money to develop eco-friendly systems

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to proceed. He was supportive of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity we’ll require in the coming years. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be advancing to environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and hydro

For afters

Eva: We touched on Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did mention that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on faith

He: I come from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been gentrified. Obviously, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down that local 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 poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe community?

Eva: I believe that Muslim people are really overrepresented in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It seems a little bit racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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

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