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Introducing the Participants

Steve, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Occupation: Retired underwriter

Voting record: Usually Tory, except when he resided in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His specialty in underwriting was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re planning evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have activated the missile silos”

Evie, twenty-five, London

Occupation: Psychology graduate

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

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her longest trip was six months, which is a long time to be at sea

For starters

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

He: She seemed like a very bright, articulate, pleasant person

Eva: I had a caprese salad, pasta with fungi, and a rich sweet treat, it was very good

The big beef

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that British people who are native to the area, not just Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the things that they need, because more and more people are entering. Whereas I just disagree that the numbers are that bad

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I believe that governments have used immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Pay are kept low, so taxes have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on child support, on schooling, on technology

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was sixteen and abroad when it occurred. He explained it to me in a new light. He informed me about EU labor migrants – candidates could come here and only be paid the wage of the country they came from

Steve: Macron spent two years getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Previously, posted workers coming in were undermining local employees. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were imported; since then it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Sharing plate

He: It would be great to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, I value fresh atmosphere, I love the countryside. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after the conflict began, they allocated those funds to develop green infrastructure

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to go about things. He was in favour of maintaining domestic drilling for the small amount we’ll need in the future. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be advancing to environmentally friendly options, windfarms and hydro

Dessert topics

Eva: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did note that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments 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 gentrified. Obviously, 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 had a little look at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it denotes deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I consented to substitute a alternative term – maybe community?

Eva: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the media as engaging in misconduct. It appears a little bit racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

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