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Meeting the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Occupation: Retired underwriter

Voting record: Usually Conservative, except when he resided in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the SDP

Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re planning evacuating people from South Korea because the North Koreans have opened the missile silos”

Evie, twenty-five, the capital

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her home country, New Zealand, she supported both progressive parties

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was half a year, which is a long time to be on a boat

For starters

Eva: Steve seemed there to have a nice time, to be receptive

He: She came across as a very bright, articulate, nice person

She: I had a caprese salad, mushroom pasta, and a creamy dessert thing, it was very good

The big beef

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that British people who already live here, including non-white white British, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because more and more people are arriving. However I just don’t think the numbers are so problematic

He: 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 governments have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Pay are kept low, so taxes have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on child support, on schooling, on innovation

Eva: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was 16 and not living here when it happened. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He told me about EU labor migrants – people could arrive in the UK and only be paid the wage of the country they came from

He: Macron spent two years 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 petroleum staff that were imported; since then 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 workers from other countries

Sharing plate

He: It would be great to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, I value fresh atmosphere, 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 develop eco-friendly systems

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 limited quantity we’ll need in the coming years. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, turbine fields and hydro

For afters

She: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about extremism coming here – he did note that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions 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. 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 “ghetto”. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she objects to the term, to her it implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe community?

Eva: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the media as doing things wrong. It appears a somewhat racist, or xenophobic

Takeaway

He: I think we parted on good terms. We had a hug at the station

She: We both said that we’d had a wonderful evening