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Meeting the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Former underwriter

Political history: Usually Conservative, apart from when he resided in a left-leaning London borough and supported the Social Democratic Party

Amuse bouche: His focus in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re discussing evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have activated the missile silos”

Eva, 25, London

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her home country, Aotearoa, she supported both Labour and Green

Interesting fact: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her longest trip was half a year, which is a long time to be at sea

For starters

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

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

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

The big beef

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that UK residents who are native to the area, not just white British, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because more and more people are entering. However I just don’t think the numbers are so problematic

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I believe that authorities have used immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Wages are suppressed, so levies have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on technology

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 informed me about EU labor migrants – candidates could come here and only be paid the wage of the their nation of origin

Steve: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; later it’s been hospitality, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Common ground

He: It would be great to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, I love the clean air, I appreciate rural areas. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their oil and gas profits soared after Ukraine started, they used that money to develop green infrastructure

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s not a good way to proceed. He was in favour of maintaining domestic drilling for the small amount we’ll need in the coming years. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be advancing to environmentally friendly options, windfarms and water power

For afters

She: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did mention that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s discriminatory 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 modernized. Obviously, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I appear out of place. People stare at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she objects to the term, to her it denotes poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe community?

Eva: I feel like Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It seems a little bit discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

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

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