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Introducing the Participants

Steve, sixty-four, Essex

Profession: Retired insurance professional

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

Amuse bouche: His focus in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing evacuating people from South Korea because the DPRK have activated the missile silos”

Evie, twenty-five, the capital

Profession: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her home country, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her longest trip was six months, which is a long time to be at sea

For starters

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

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

She: I had a caprese salad, mushroom pasta, and a creamy dessert thing, it was delicious

Key disagreement

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that UK residents who already live here, not just Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because more and more people are arriving. Whereas I just disagree that the figures are so problematic

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I maintain that governments have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Wages are kept low, so levies have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on technology

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was 16 and abroad when it happened. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about “posted workers” – candidates could come here and receive solely the salary of the country they came from

Steve: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was reformed in 2018. Previously, posted workers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; later it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than international colleagues

Common ground

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 love the countryside. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to develop eco-friendly systems

She: 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 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 hydro

For afters

She: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – 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 make judgments based on faith

Steve: I come from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been modernized. Naturally, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I look like a foreigner. 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 objects to the term, to her it denotes deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I consented to substitute a alternative term – maybe community?

Eva: I feel like followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the media as engaging in misconduct. It seems a somewhat racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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

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