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Meeting the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Essex

Occupation: Former insurance professional

Political history: Usually Conservative, except when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the SDP

Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing evacuating people from South Korea because the North Koreans have opened the missile silos”

Evie, 25, the capital

Profession: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her native land, New Zealand, she supported both progressive parties

Interesting fact: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a significant duration to be at sea

For starters

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

He: She came across as a very intelligent, articulate, nice person

Eva: I had a caprese salad, mushroom pasta, and a rich sweet treat, it was very good

Key disagreement

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that British people who are native to the area, not just white British, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because more and more people are arriving. Whereas I just disagree that the numbers are so problematic

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I maintain that governments have used immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff 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 schooling, on technology

Eva: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was sixteen and abroad when it occurred. He explained it to me in a new light. He informed me about EU labor migrants – candidates could come here and receive solely the salary of the their nation of origin

Steve: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Previously, posted workers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were imported; since then 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

Common ground

Steve: It would be great to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, 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 oil and gas profits soared after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to build green infrastructure

Eva: 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 advancing to environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and hydro

For afters

She: We touched on Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did mention that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions based on faith

He: I hail 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: 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 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 deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe enclave?

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

Conclusion

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

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