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Introducing the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Essex

Profession: Retired underwriter

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

Amuse bouche: His specialty in insurance was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re planning rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have opened the weapon systems”

Eva, twenty-five, London

Profession: Psychology graduate

Voting record: 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 long time to be on a boat

Initial impressions

She: Steve seemed focused on enjoying the meal, to be receptive

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

Eva: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, mushroom pasta, and a creamy dessert thing, it was delicious

The big beef

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that British people who are native to the area, not just Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because more and more people are entering. Whereas I just don’t think the figures are that bad

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I believe that authorities have exploited immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Wages are kept low, so taxes have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on child support, on schooling, on innovation

Eva: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was sixteen and abroad when it happened. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He told me about EU labor migrants – candidates could come here and only be paid the wage of the country they came from

He: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the system; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff 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 earning significantly higher than international colleagues

Common ground

He: It would be great to have a alternative power, transition from fossil fuels. I disapprove of environmental harm, I value fresh atmosphere, I appreciate rural areas. We agreed 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 develop eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to proceed. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll need in the future. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, turbine fields and hydro

Dessert topics

She: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did note that a many individuals in the Arab world were extremist, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions based on faith

He: I hail from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been gentrified. Obviously, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down that local market, I appear out of place. People stare 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 Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it denotes poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe enclave?

Eva: I feel like followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It appears a somewhat discriminatory, or xenophobic

Takeaway

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

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