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Meeting the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Essex

Occupation: Former insurance professional

Voting record: Typically Tory, except when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and supported the Social Democratic Party

Amuse bouche: His focus in underwriting was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re planning rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have opened the weapon systems”

Evie, 25, London

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her home country, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of Labour and Green

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

Initial impressions

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

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

Eva: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, mushroom pasta, and a rich sweet treat, it was very good

Key disagreement

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that UK residents who are native to the area, including non-white white British, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because more and more people are entering. However I just don’t think the figures are so problematic

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I believe that authorities have used immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without raising wages. Wages are kept low, so levies 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 sixteen and not living here when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a new light. He told me about EU labor migrants – people could arrive in the UK and only be paid the salary of the country they came from

Steve: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the system; it was revised in 2018. Previously, posted workers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were brought in; since then it’s been service industry, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Common ground

He: 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 love the countryside. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after the conflict began, they used that money 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 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 advancing to environmentally friendly options, windfarms and hydro

Dessert topics

Eva: We touched on Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did mention that a lot of the people in the Arab world were extremist, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s discriminatory 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 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 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 implies deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a alternative term – maybe enclave?

She: I believe that followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It appears a somewhat racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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

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