🔗 Share this article

Introducing the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Occupation: Retired insurance professional

Political history: Usually Tory, except when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the SDP

Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing rescuing people from South Korea because the North Koreans have activated the weapon systems”

Evie, 25, the capital

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her native land, New Zealand, she voted a combination of Labour and Green

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her longest trip was six months, which is a long time to be on a boat

For starters

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

Steve: She seemed like a very bright, articulate, pleasant person

Eva: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, mushroom pasta, and a rich sweet treat, it was delicious

The big beef

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that UK residents who already live here, including non-white white British, face limited 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

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I maintain that authorities have exploited immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Pay are kept low, so taxes have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on childcare, on education, on technology

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

He: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the system; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undermining local employees. 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 cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be great to have a different energy source, transition from fossil fuels. 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 energy revenues skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to build eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s not a good way to proceed. He was supportive of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity 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 environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and hydro

For afters

Eva: We touched on Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about extremism coming here – he did note that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were extremist, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on faith

Steve: 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: populated by professionals. But when I go down Chrisp Street 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 objects to the term, to her it implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I agreed to use a alternative term – maybe enclave?

She: I feel like Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the media as doing things wrong. It appears a little bit discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

He: 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