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Introducing the Participants

Stephen, 64, Canvey Island

Occupation: Retired insurance professional

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

Amuse bouche: His focus in insurance was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re planning rescuing people from South Korea because the DPRK have activated the weapon systems”

Evie, 25, the capital

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her native land, New Zealand, she supported both Labour and Green

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

For starters

Eva: Steve appeared focused on enjoying the meal, to be open

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

Eva: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, 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 believes that British people who are native to the area, including non-white white British, face limited access to the essential services, because more and more people are arriving. However I just don’t think the figures are so problematic

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I believe that governments have used immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Pay are suppressed, so levies have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on child support, on education, on technology

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

He: The French president spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Previously, posted workers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were brought in; later it’s been service industry, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than international colleagues

Common ground

Steve: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, I love the clean air, I love the countryside. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after the conflict began, 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 need 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, windfarms and hydro

Dessert topics

She: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did note that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on faith

He: I hail from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been gentrified. Naturally, 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 predominantly Islamic. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she objects to the term, to her it implies deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a alternative term – maybe community?

She: I believe that followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It appears a little bit racist, or xenophobic

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