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Introducing the Participants

Steve, sixty-four, Essex

Occupation: Retired insurance professional

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

Amuse bouche: His focus in insurance was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re planning evacuating people from South Korea because the North Koreans have activated the weapon systems”

Evie, twenty-five, the capital

Profession: Psychology graduate

Political history: In her native land, New Zealand, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed 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

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

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

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

The big beef

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that UK residents who already live here, not just Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the essential services, because more and more people are arriving. However I just don’t think the numbers are that bad

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I believe that authorities have used immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Wages are suppressed, so levies have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on child support, on education, on innovation

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was 16 and not living here when it happened. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He told me about EU labor migrants – candidates could arrive in the UK and receive solely the salary of the their nation of origin

Steve: 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 local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were brought in; since then it’s been service industry, agriculture. She understood that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Sharing plate

He: It would be great to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, 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 oil and gas profits skyrocketed after the conflict began, they used that money to build eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to go about things. He was supportive of continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll need in the coming years. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be advancing to environmentally friendly options, windfarms and hydro

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 accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on religion

Steve: 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 gaze at me because it’s become very Muslim. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it implies deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe enclave?

Eva: I believe that followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the media as engaging in misconduct. It appears a little bit discriminatory, or xenophobic

Takeaway

He: 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