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Introducing the Participants

Steve, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Former insurance professional

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

Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re planning rescuing people from South Korea because the DPRK have activated the missile silos”

Evie, 25, the capital

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

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

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a long time to be at sea

For starters

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

He: She came across as a very intelligent, articulate, pleasant person

She: 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 definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that British people who are native to the area, not just Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the things that they need, because more and more people are arriving. Whereas I just disagree that the figures are so problematic

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I maintain that authorities have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without raising wages. Wages are kept low, so levies have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on child support, on education, on innovation

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and abroad when it happened. He clarified it to me in a new light. He told me about “posted workers” – candidates could arrive in the UK and only be paid the wage of the their nation of origin

He: The French president spent two years getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was revised in 2018. Before that, posted workers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; later it’s been service industry, agriculture. She understood that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, transition from fossil fuels. 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

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s not a good way to proceed. 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 rely on air travel. We both think we should be advancing to environmentally friendly options, windfarms and water power

Dessert topics

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

He: I hail from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been modernized. Naturally, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down that local market, I appear out of place. People stare at me because it’s become very Muslim. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – 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 enclave?

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

Conclusion

Steve: I think we separated amicably. We had a hug at the train stop

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