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Introducing the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Occupation: Former insurance professional

Voting record: Usually Tory, apart from when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the SDP

Interesting fact: His specialty in insurance was hostage situations: “Everyone always says 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 weapon systems”

Eva, 25, London

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her native land, New Zealand, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was half a year, which is a significant duration to be at sea

For starters

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

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

She: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, mushroom pasta, and a rich sweet treat, it was very good

Key disagreement

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that UK residents who are native to the area, not just Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are entering. However I just disagree that the figures are that bad

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I maintain that governments have used immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Wages are suppressed, so levies have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on child support, on schooling, on innovation

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was sixteen and abroad when it happened. He explained it to me in a new light. He told me about “posted workers” – people could come here and receive solely the wage of the their nation of origin

Steve: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undermining British workers. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were imported; later it’s been service industry, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Sharing plate

He: It would be great to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, I value fresh atmosphere, I appreciate rural areas. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their energy revenues soared after the conflict began, they allocated those funds to build green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. 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 use planes. We both think we should be moving towards environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and hydro

For afters

She: 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 Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on faith

He: I hail from the eastern part of London. 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 that local market, I look like a foreigner. People stare at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. 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 their own.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe enclave?

Eva: I feel like Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the media as engaging in misconduct. It seems a somewhat discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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

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