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Meeting the Participants

Steve, sixty-four, Essex

Profession: Retired underwriter

Political history: Typically Tory, apart from when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the Social Democratic Party

Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re discussing rescuing people from South Korea because the North Koreans have opened the weapon systems”

Evie, twenty-five, London

Profession: Psychology graduate

Political history: In her home country, New Zealand, she voted a combination of Labour and Green

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 at sea

Initial impressions

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

Steve: She came across as a very intelligent, articulate, nice person

Eva: I had a caprese salad, mushroom pasta, and a creamy dessert thing, it was very good

Key disagreement

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that British people who already live here, including non-white white British, face limited access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are entering. Whereas I just disagree that the figures are that bad

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I maintain that governments have exploited immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without raising wages. Pay are kept low, so taxes have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on childcare, on education, on technology

Eva: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was 16 and not living here when it occurred. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about “posted workers” – people could arrive in the UK and only be paid the wage of the their nation of origin

Steve: Macron spent two years getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undermining local employees. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; later it’s been service industry, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be ideal to have a different energy source, transition from fossil fuels. I don’t like pollution, I love the clean air, I appreciate rural areas. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their oil and gas profits soared after the conflict began, they allocated those funds to develop eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s not a good way to go about things. He was supportive of continuing our own oil exploration for the small amount we’ll need in the future. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be moving towards environmentally friendly options, windfarms and water power

For afters

She: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did mention that a many individuals in the Arab world were extremist, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on religion

He: I hail from the East End. 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 stare 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 denotes deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a alternative term – maybe enclave?

She: I feel like Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the media as doing things wrong. It appears a somewhat discriminatory, or xenophobic

Takeaway

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

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