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Introducing the Participants

Steve, 64, Canvey Island

Occupation: Former underwriter

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

Amuse bouche: His focus in underwriting was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re planning evacuating people from South Korea because the North Koreans have activated the weapon systems”

Eva, 25, London

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her home country, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of Labour and Green

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a significant duration to be at sea

Initial impressions

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

He: She seemed like a very intelligent, well-spoken, nice person

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

Key disagreement

Eva: He was certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that British people who already live here, including non-white white British, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are entering. However I just don’t think the figures are so problematic

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I maintain that governments have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without raising wages. Wages are suppressed, so taxes have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on child support, on schooling, on innovation

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was 16 and not living here when it happened. He explained it to me in a new light. He told me about “posted workers” – people could arrive in the UK and receive solely the salary of the their nation of origin

Steve: The French president spent two years getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were imported; since then it’s been service industry, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Sharing plate

He: It would be great to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, 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 oil and gas profits skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they used that money to develop eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s not a good way to proceed. He was in favour of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity we’ll require 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 greener solutions, turbine fields and water power

Dessert topics

Eva: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did mention that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on religion

Steve: I hail from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been modernized. Naturally, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down that local 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 Eastern European roots – she doesn’t like that word, to her it denotes poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe enclave?

Eva: I believe that Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It seems a somewhat discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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

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