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Meeting the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Essex

Profession: Former insurance professional

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

Interesting fact: His focus in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: “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 weapon systems”

Eva, 25, London

Profession: Graduate in psychology

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

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her longest trip was half a year, which is a long time to be on a boat

For starters

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

Steve: She seemed like a very intelligent, well-spoken, pleasant person

Eva: I had a caprese salad, pasta with fungi, and a rich sweet treat, it was delicious

Key disagreement

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that British people who are native to the area, not just Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because more and more people are arriving. However I just don’t think the numbers are so problematic

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 struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Pay are kept low, so taxes have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on childcare, on schooling, on innovation

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and abroad when it occurred. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He told me about EU labor migrants – people could arrive in the UK and only be paid the wage of the their nation of origin

He: Macron spent two years getting the EU to do away with the system; it was revised in 2018. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undermining local employees. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; since then it’s been service industry, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was earning significantly higher than international colleagues

Common ground

Steve: It would be great to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, I love the clean air, I love the countryside. We agreed 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 allocated those funds to build eco-friendly systems

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s not a good way to go about things. He was supportive of continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll require 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

Eva: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about extremism coming here – he did mention that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were extremist, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions 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 modernized. Obviously, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down Chrisp Street 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 “ghetto”. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she objects to the term, to her it denotes deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I agreed to use a alternative term – maybe enclave?

Eva: I believe that followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It appears a little bit racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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

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