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Meeting the Participants

Stephen, 64, Canvey Island

Profession: Retired insurance professional

Political history: Typically Tory, apart from when he resided in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the SDP

Interesting fact: His specialty in insurance was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re planning rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have activated the missile silos”

Eva, 25, London

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Political history: In her home country, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Interesting fact: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was half a year, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

Initial impressions

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

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

She: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, mushroom pasta, and a rich sweet treat, it was delicious

Key disagreement

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that UK residents who already live here, including non-white white British, face limited access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are arriving. However I just don’t think the figures 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 can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Pay are suppressed, so levies have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on childcare, on education, on innovation

She: I don’t have that much knowledge 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 EU labor migrants – candidates could come here and receive solely the salary of the their nation of origin

Steve: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was reformed in 2018. Before that, posted workers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; later it’s been service industry, agriculture. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Common ground

He: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, transition from fossil fuels. 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 oil and gas profits soared after Ukraine started, they used that money to develop green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to proceed. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll require in the future. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, turbine fields and water power

For afters

She: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did note that a many individuals in the Arab world were radical, which I felt was not fair. 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 modernized. Naturally, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I appear out of place. People gaze at me because it’s become very Muslim. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word segregated area. 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 their own.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe enclave?

Eva: I feel like followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It seems a little bit racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

He: I think we parted on good terms. We had a embrace at the train stop

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