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Introducing the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Former insurance professional

Voting record: Usually Conservative, apart from when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the Social Democratic Party

Amuse bouche: His specialty in insurance was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re planning rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have opened the weapon systems”

Evie, twenty-five, London

Profession: Graduate in psychology

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

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

For starters

She: Steve appeared focused on enjoying the meal, to be receptive

He: She came across as a very bright, articulate, nice person

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

The big beef

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that UK residents who are native to the area, including non-white Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are arriving. Whereas I just don’t think the figures are that bad

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I believe that governments have used immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Wages are suppressed, so levies have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on child support, on schooling, on technology

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and abroad when it happened. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He told me about “posted workers” – candidates could arrive in the UK and only be paid the salary of the their nation of origin

Steve: Macron spent two years getting the EU to do away with the system; it was revised in 2018. Before that, posted workers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were imported; later it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She understood 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 ideal to have a alternative power, 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 Norway?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after the conflict began, they used that money to develop green infrastructure

She: 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 continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll need 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 anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did mention that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s discriminatory 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 modernized. Obviously, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I appear out of place. People gaze at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. 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 agreed to use a different word – maybe enclave?

Eva: I believe that followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It appears a little bit racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

Steve: I think we parted on good terms. We had a embrace at the station

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