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Introducing the Participants

Steve, 64, Canvey Island

Occupation: Former insurance professional

Voting record: Typically Tory, except when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His specialty in insurance was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re planning rescuing people from South Korea because the DPRK have opened the weapon systems”

Eva, 25, London

Occupation: Psychology graduate

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

Interesting fact: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her longest trip was half a year, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

For starters

She: Steve appeared focused on enjoying the meal, to be open

Steve: She seemed like a very intelligent, articulate, nice person

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

The big beef

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that UK residents who already live here, not just white British, face limited access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are entering. Whereas I just disagree that the numbers are that bad

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I maintain that governments have used immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Pay are suppressed, so taxes have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on childcare, on education, on technology

Eva: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and abroad when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a new light. He informed me about EU labor migrants – candidates could arrive in the UK and only be paid the wage of the their nation of origin

Steve: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in 2018. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undermining British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were imported; later it’s been hospitality, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be great to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, I love the clean air, I appreciate rural areas. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after the conflict began, they used that money to develop green infrastructure

She: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s not a good way to proceed. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the small amount we’ll need in the coming years. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be moving towards environmentally friendly options, windfarms and water power

For afters

She: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did note that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were extremist, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on faith

He: I come 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 gaze at me because it’s become very Muslim. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word segregated area. 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 consented to substitute a different word – maybe community?

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

Conclusion

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

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