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Introducing the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Retired underwriter

Voting record: Usually Conservative, except when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the SDP

Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re planning evacuating people from South Korea because the North Koreans have opened the weapon systems”

Evie, twenty-five, the capital

Profession: Psychology graduate

Voting record: 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 significant duration to be on a boat

For starters

She: Steve seemed there to have a nice time, to be receptive

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

Eva: I had a caprese salad, pasta with fungi, and a creamy dessert thing, it was delicious

The big beef

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that UK residents who already live here, not just white British, 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 so problematic

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I believe that governments have exploited immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Pay are suppressed, so levies have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on child support, on education, on technology

She: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and abroad when it happened. He clarified it to me in a new light. He informed me about “posted workers” – people could come here and receive solely the wage of the their nation of origin

He: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was revised in 2018. Before that, posted workers coming in were undermining British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were brought in; since then it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than international colleagues

Common ground

He: It would be ideal to have a different energy source, transition from fossil fuels. 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 eco-friendly systems

Eva: 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 partially concur with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, windfarms and water power

For afters

She: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did mention that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions based on faith

He: I come from the East End. 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 that local market, I look like a foreigner. People gaze at me because it’s become very Muslim. 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 agreed to use a alternative term – maybe community?

She: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It appears a somewhat racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

He: I think we separated amicably. We had a embrace at the train stop

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