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Introducing the Participants

Steve, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Former underwriter

Political history: Usually Tory, except when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the SDP

Amuse bouche: His focus in insurance was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing evacuating people from South Korea because the DPRK have opened the missile silos”

Eva, 25, London

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her native land, New Zealand, she supported both progressive parties

Interesting fact: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

For starters

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

Steve: She came across as a very intelligent, well-spoken, nice person

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

Key disagreement

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that British people who are native to the area, not just white British, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because more and more people 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 warm beer. But I believe that authorities have used immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Wages are suppressed, so taxes have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on innovation

She: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and abroad when it happened. He explained it to me in a new light. He told me about EU labor migrants – people could come here and only be paid the salary of the their nation of origin

Steve: Macron spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undermining local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; later it’s been hospitality, farms. 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 ideal to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, I love the clean air, I love the countryside. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their oil and gas profits skyrocketed after the conflict began, they allocated those funds to build eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s not a good way to go about things. He was supportive of continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll need in the future. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and hydro

Dessert topics

She: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did note that a many individuals in the Arab world were radical, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on faith

Steve: 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 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 segregated area. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she doesn’t like that word, to her it implies deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” 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 little bit racist, or xenophobic

Conclusion

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

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