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Meeting the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Essex

Occupation: Former insurance professional

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

Amuse bouche: His focus in insurance was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re planning evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have opened the weapon systems”

Eva, 25, the capital

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her native land, Aotearoa, she supported both Labour and Green

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her longest trip was half a year, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

Initial impressions

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

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

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

Key disagreement

Eva: He was certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that British people who already live here, including non-white white British, face limited access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are entering. However I just don’t think the numbers are that bad

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I maintain that authorities 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 minimized, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on childcare, on education, on innovation

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and abroad when it occurred. He explained it to me in a new light. He told me about “posted workers” – candidates could arrive in the UK and receive solely the wage of the country they came from

Steve: The French president spent two years getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was revised in 2018. Previously, posted workers coming in were undermining British workers. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were brought in; since then it’s been hospitality, agriculture. 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

Steve: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, transition from fossil fuels. I don’t like pollution, I value fresh atmosphere, I love the countryside. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their oil and gas profits soared 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 an unfavorable approach to proceed. He was supportive of continuing our own oil exploration 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 moving towards greener solutions, windfarms and water power

Dessert topics

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 the Arab world were extremist, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on faith

He: I hail from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been gentrified. 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 predominantly Islamic. 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 deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I agreed to use a alternative term – maybe community?

She: I believe that followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It seems a somewhat racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

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

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