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Meeting the Participants

Steve, sixty-four, Essex

Profession: Retired insurance professional

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

Interesting fact: His focus in underwriting was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re planning evacuating people from South Korea because the DPRK have opened the missile silos”

Evie, twenty-five, London

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her native land, New Zealand, she supported both progressive parties

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was half a year, which is a significant duration to be at sea

Initial impressions

Eva: Steve seemed there to have a nice time, to be open

He: She came across as a very intelligent, well-spoken, nice person

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

The big beef

Eva: He was certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that British people who already live here, not just Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are entering. However I just don’t think the figures are so problematic

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I believe that governments have used immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without raising wages. Pay are kept low, so levies have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on childcare, on education, on technology

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was 16 and abroad when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a new light. He informed me about “posted workers” – people could arrive in the UK and receive solely the salary of the country they came from

He: Macron spent two years getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Before that, posted workers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were imported; later it’s been service industry, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Sharing plate

He: It would be great to have a alternative power, transition from fossil fuels. I disapprove of environmental harm, I value fresh atmosphere, I love the countryside. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their oil and gas profits skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they used that money to build green infrastructure

She: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s not a good way to proceed. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll require in the coming years. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, windfarms and hydro

Dessert topics

She: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about extremism coming here – he did mention that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments 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 Chrisp Street market, I appear out of place. People stare at me because it’s become very Muslim. She gave a slight glance 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 poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe enclave?

Eva: I believe that Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the media as engaging in misconduct. It seems a somewhat discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

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

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