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Introducing the Participants

Steve, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Former insurance professional

Voting record: 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 hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing rescuing people from South Korea because the DPRK have activated the weapon systems”

Evie, 25, London

Occupation: Psychology graduate

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

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her longest trip was six months, which is a long time to be at sea

For starters

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

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

Eva: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, pasta with fungi, and a creamy dessert thing, it was delicious

The big beef

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that UK residents who already live here, including non-white Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are entering. Whereas I just disagree that the figures are that bad

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I believe that governments have exploited immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Wages are kept low, so taxes have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on childcare, on education, on innovation

Eva: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was 16 and abroad when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He told me about “posted workers” – people could come here and only be paid the wage of the their nation of origin

He: The French president spent two years getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was reformed in 2018. Previously, posted workers coming in were undermining British workers. 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 passenger vessel and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be great 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 oil and gas profits soared after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to build eco-friendly systems

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 rely on air travel. We both think we should be moving towards environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and hydro

For afters

She: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did note that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were extremist, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on faith

He: I hail from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been gentrified. 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 gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – 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 different word – maybe community?

She: I believe that followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It seems a somewhat discriminatory, or xenophobic

Conclusion

Steve: 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