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Introducing the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Essex

Occupation: Former insurance professional

Voting record: Usually Tory, except when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the SDP

Interesting fact: His focus in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have activated the weapon systems”

Evie, 25, the capital

Profession: Graduate in psychology

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

Interesting fact: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was half a year, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

For starters

She: Steve seemed there to have a nice time, to be receptive

Steve: She came across as a very intelligent, well-spoken, pleasant person

Eva: I had a caprese salad, mushroom pasta, and a rich sweet treat, it was very good

The big beef

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that UK residents who already live here, including non-white white British, face limited access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are arriving. However I just don’t think the figures are that bad

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I believe that governments have exploited immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Pay are kept low, so taxes have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on childcare, on education, on technology

She: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and not living here when it happened. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He told me about “posted workers” – people could come here and receive solely the salary of the their nation of origin

He: Macron spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Previously, posted workers coming in were undermining local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were imported; later it’s been service industry, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Common ground

Steve: It would be great to have a different energy source, come off of oil. 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 Norway?” Their oil and gas profits skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they used that money to build green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to go about things. He was in favour of maintaining domestic drilling 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, turbine fields and water power

Dessert topics

Eva: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did mention that a lot of the people in the Arab world were extremist, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on religion

He: I hail from the eastern part of London. 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 very Muslim. 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 implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe enclave?

Eva: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It seems a little bit discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

Steve: I think we parted on good terms. We had a embrace at the station

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