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Introducing the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Essex

Occupation: Retired insurance professional

Voting record: Usually Conservative, apart from when he resided in a left-leaning London borough and supported the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His specialty in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: “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 activated the missile silos”

Evie, 25, the capital

Profession: Graduate in psychology

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

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed 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 focused on enjoying the meal, to be receptive

He: She seemed like a very intelligent, articulate, nice person

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

The big beef

Eva: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that UK residents who already live here, including non-white Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the essential services, because more and more people are arriving. Whereas I just don’t think the numbers are so problematic

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I believe that governments have exploited immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Wages are suppressed, so taxes have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on child support, on education, on innovation

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was sixteen and abroad when it occurred. He explained it to me in a new light. He told me about EU labor migrants – people could come here and receive solely the salary of the their nation of origin

He: Macron spent two years getting the EU to do away with the system; it was revised in 2018. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undermining British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were brought in; since then 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

Sharing plate

Steve: 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 appreciate rural areas. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after the conflict began, they allocated those funds to build green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to proceed. He was supportive of continuing our own oil exploration for the small amount we’ll need in the coming years. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, turbine fields and water power

For afters

Eva: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did note that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were extremist, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions based on religion

He: I hail from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been modernized. Obviously, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down that local 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 segregated area. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it denotes poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe community?

She: I believe that followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the media as doing things wrong. It seems a little bit racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

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

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