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Meeting the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Occupation: Former insurance professional

Political history: Usually Conservative, apart from when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and supported the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His specialty in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re planning evacuating people from South Korea because the North Koreans have opened the weapon systems”

Eva, twenty-five, the capital

Profession: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her home country, New Zealand, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Interesting fact: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was half a year, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

Initial impressions

Eva: Steve seemed focused on enjoying the meal, to be open

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

She: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, mushroom pasta, and a creamy dessert thing, it was delicious

The big beef

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that UK residents who already live here, including non-white white British, face limited access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are entering. Whereas I just don’t think the figures are so problematic

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I believe that governments have used immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without raising wages. 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 technology

She: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was 16 and not living here when it occurred. He explained it to me in a new light. He informed me about “posted workers” – people could come here and only be paid the wage of the country they came from

Steve: Macron spent two years getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was revised in 2018. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undermining local employees. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were imported; later it’s been hospitality, 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

Common ground

Steve: It would be great to have a alternative power, 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 the Scandinavian nation?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they used that money to build eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to proceed. He was in favour of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity we’ll require in the coming years. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be advancing to greener solutions, windfarms and water power

Dessert topics

Eva: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did mention that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on faith

He: I come from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been modernized. Naturally, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down that local market, I appear out of place. 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 Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I consented to substitute a alternative term – maybe enclave?

Eva: I feel like followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It seems a little bit racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

Steve: 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