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Meeting the Participants

Stephen, 64, Essex

Profession: Former insurance professional

Voting record: Typically Conservative, apart from when he resided in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the SDP

Interesting fact: His focus in underwriting was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re planning rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have opened the weapon systems”

Evie, twenty-five, the capital

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her home country, Aotearoa, 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 six months, which is a long time to be at sea

For starters

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

He: She seemed like a very intelligent, articulate, pleasant person

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

Key disagreement

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that UK residents who are native to the area, including non-white white British, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are arriving. Whereas I just don’t think the figures are so problematic

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I believe that authorities have exploited immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Pay are suppressed, so taxes have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on child support, on education, on innovation

She: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and not living here when it occurred. He explained it to me in a new light. He informed me about EU labor migrants – people could arrive in the UK and only be paid the salary of the country they came from

Steve: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in 2018. Previously, posted workers coming in were undermining British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were brought in; later it’s been hospitality, 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, transition from fossil fuels. I don’t like pollution, I love the clean air, I appreciate rural areas. We agreed 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 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 proceed. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the small amount 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 moving towards environmentally friendly options, windfarms and hydro

For afters

She: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did note that a lot of the people in the Arab world were extremist, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on faith

Steve: I come from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been gentrified. Naturally, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down Chrisp Street 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 denotes 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 doing things wrong. It seems a little bit racist, or xenophobic

Takeaway

Steve: I think we parted on good terms. We had a hug at the train stop

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