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Introducing the Participants

Stephen, 64, Canvey Island

Profession: Retired underwriter

Voting record: Typically Conservative, except when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and supported the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His specialty in underwriting was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re planning rescuing people from South Korea because the North Koreans have activated the missile silos”

Evie, 25, London

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her native land, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her longest trip was half a year, which is a long time to be at sea

Initial impressions

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

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

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

The big beef

Eva: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that UK residents 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. However I just don’t think the numbers are that bad

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I believe that governments have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Pay are suppressed, so levies have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on child support, on education, on technology

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was 16 and abroad when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He told me about EU labor migrants – people could arrive in the UK and only be paid the wage of the country they came from

He: The French president spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; since then it’s been hospitality, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more 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 energy revenues skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to build green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s not a good way to proceed. He was supportive of continuing our own oil exploration for the small amount we’ll require in the future. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, windfarms and water power

Dessert topics

Eva: We touched on Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did mention that a lot of the people in the Arab world were extremist, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on religion

Steve: I come 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: full of yuppies. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I appear out of place. People stare 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 theirs.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe community?

Eva: I believe that followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the media as engaging in misconduct. It appears a little bit discriminatory, or xenophobic

Conclusion

Steve: I think we separated amicably. We had a hug at the train stop

Eva: We both said that we’d had a wonderful evening