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Meeting the Participants

Steve, sixty-four, Essex

Occupation: Retired underwriter

Voting record: Typically Tory, apart from when he resided in a left-leaning London borough and supported the SDP

Amuse bouche: His focus in underwriting was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have opened the missile silos”

Evie, twenty-five, London

Profession: Psychology graduate

Political history: In her home country, New Zealand, she supported both Labour and Green

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

For starters

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

Steve: She came across as a very bright, articulate, pleasant person

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

Key disagreement

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that British people who already live here, including non-white white British, face limited access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are arriving. Whereas I just disagree that the numbers are so problematic

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I maintain that authorities have exploited immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Wages are kept low, so levies have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on childcare, on schooling, on innovation

She: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was 16 and not living here when it happened. He clarified it to me in a new light. He informed me about “posted workers” – people could come here and only be paid the salary of the their nation of origin

He: The French president spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undermining local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were brought in; since then it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Common ground

Steve: It would be ideal to have a different energy source, transition from fossil fuels. I don’t like pollution, I love the clean air, I love the countryside. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their energy revenues soared after the conflict began, they allocated those funds to build eco-friendly systems

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 continuing our own oil exploration for the small amount 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 greener solutions, turbine fields and hydro

For afters

She: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did note that a lot of the people in the Arab world were extremist, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on faith

He: I come from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been modernized. 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 predominantly Islamic. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word segregated area. 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 their own.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe community?

Eva: 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

Takeaway

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

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