🔗 Share this article

Introducing the Participants

Stephen, 64, Canvey Island

Profession: Retired underwriter

Political history: Typically Tory, except when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and supported 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 discussing evacuating people from South Korea because the North Koreans have activated the weapon systems”

Evie, twenty-five, the capital

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

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

Interesting fact: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her longest trip was six months, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

Initial impressions

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

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

Eva: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, pasta with fungi, and a creamy dessert thing, it was very good

Key disagreement

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that British people who already live here, not just Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much 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 qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I believe that authorities have used 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 are unable to improve services – spend more money on childcare, on education, on innovation

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

Steve: Macron spent two years getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was reformed in 2018. Before that, posted workers coming in were undermining local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; since then it’s been service industry, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Common ground

He: It would be ideal to have a different energy source, transition from fossil fuels. I disapprove of environmental harm, 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

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s not a good way to go about things. He was supportive of continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity 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 advancing to greener solutions, windfarms and water power

Dessert topics

She: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did note that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions based on faith

Steve: I come from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been gentrified. Obviously, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I look like a foreigner. People gaze at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she objects to the term, to her it denotes deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe enclave?

Eva: I believe that Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the media as doing things wrong. It appears a little bit racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

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

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