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Introducing the Participants

Stephen, 64, Essex

Profession: Retired insurance professional

Political history: Typically Tory, apart from when he resided in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the SDP

Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re discussing rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have opened the missile silos”

Eva, 25, London

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her native land, New Zealand, she voted a combination of Labour and Green

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a long time to be on a boat

Initial impressions

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

He: She came across as a very bright, well-spoken, pleasant person

She: I had a caprese salad, 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 white British, face limited access to the things that they need, because more and more people are arriving. However I just disagree that the numbers 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 used immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Wages are suppressed, so taxes have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on childcare, on education, on innovation

Eva: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and abroad when it occurred. He explained it to me in a new light. He told me about “posted workers” – people could arrive in the UK and only be paid the wage of the country they came from

Steve: The French president spent two years getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undermining local employees. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were brought in; later it’s been hospitality, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Common ground

He: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, I value fresh atmosphere, I appreciate rural areas. We found consensus 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

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to go about things. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll need in the future. 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

Dessert topics

Eva: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about extremism coming here – he did note that a many individuals in the Arab world were radical, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on religion

Steve: 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 look like a foreigner. 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 objects to the term, to her it implies deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I agreed to use a alternative term – maybe community?

Eva: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented 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 embrace at the station

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