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Introducing the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Essex

Occupation: Retired underwriter

Voting record: Typically Tory, apart from when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the SDP

Amuse bouche: His focus in insurance was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing evacuating people from South Korea because the DPRK have activated the missile silos”

Eva, 25, the capital

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her home country, Aotearoa, she supported both Labour and Green

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her longest trip was six months, which is a significant duration to be at sea

Initial impressions

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

Steve: She came across as a very bright, well-spoken, nice person

She: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, mushroom pasta, and a rich sweet treat, it was delicious

The big beef

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. 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 increasing numbers are entering. However I just disagree that the figures are that bad

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I maintain that governments have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Pay are suppressed, so levies have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on child support, on education, on technology

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was sixteen and not living here when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about EU labor migrants – candidates could arrive in the UK and only be paid the wage of the country they came from

Steve: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was revised in 2018. Previously, posted workers coming in were undermining British workers. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were imported; later it’s been hospitality, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Common ground

He: It would be ideal 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 oil and gas profits skyrocketed after the conflict began, they allocated those funds to develop green infrastructure

She: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s not a good way to go about things. He was supportive of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity we’ll require in the future. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and water power

Dessert topics

Eva: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about extremism coming here – he did note that a many individuals in the Arab world were extremist, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on religion

Steve: I hail from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been gentrified. Naturally, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I appear out of place. People gaze 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 doesn’t like that word, to her it implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe enclave?

She: I believe that followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It seems a little bit racist, or xenophobic

Takeaway

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

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