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Meeting the Participants

Stephen, 64, Canvey Island

Occupation: 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 kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing evacuating people from South Korea because the North Koreans have activated the weapon systems”

Eva, 25, the capital

Profession: Graduate in psychology

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 half a year, which is a long time to be on a boat

Initial impressions

Eva: Steve appeared there to have a nice time, to be receptive

He: She came across as a very intelligent, well-spoken, pleasant person

Eva: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, pasta with fungi, and a rich sweet treat, it was very good

The big beef

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that British people who are native to the area, including non-white Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because more and more people are entering. However I just don’t think the figures are so problematic

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I maintain that authorities have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without raising wages. Wages are kept low, so taxes have to be minimized, 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 not living here when it happened. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He told me about EU labor migrants – candidates could arrive in the UK and only be paid the wage 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 2018. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undermining British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were brought in; since then 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 international colleagues

Common ground

Steve: 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 found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their energy revenues soared after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to build green infrastructure

She: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to go about things. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll require in the coming years. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be advancing to greener solutions, windfarms and hydro

Dessert topics

She: We touched on Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did note that a lot of the people in the Arab world were radical, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on religion

He: I hail from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been modernized. Obviously, 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 predominantly Islamic. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she doesn’t like that word, to her it implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I agreed to use a alternative term – maybe community?

Eva: I feel like followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the media as doing things wrong. It appears a little bit discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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

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