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Introducing the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Essex

Profession: Retired underwriter

Voting record: Usually Conservative, apart from when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the SDP

Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re planning rescuing people from South Korea because the North Koreans have activated the missile silos”

Eva, twenty-five, the capital

Profession: Psychology graduate

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

Interesting fact: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her longest trip was six months, which is a long time to be at sea

Initial impressions

She: Steve seemed focused on enjoying the meal, to be receptive

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

Eva: 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 reduced. He believes that British people who are native to the area, including non-white white British, face limited access to the things that they need, because more and more people are arriving. Whereas I just don’t think the numbers are that bad

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I believe that governments have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Wages are kept low, so taxes have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on childcare, on education, 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 new light. He informed me about “posted workers” – people could come here and only be paid the salary of the country they came from

He: The French president spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was reformed in 2018. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were brought in; since then it’s been hospitality, agriculture. 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

Steve: It would be great to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, I value fresh atmosphere, I appreciate rural areas. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to build green infrastructure

She: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to go about things. He was in favour of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity we’ll require in the future. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be advancing to greener solutions, turbine fields and hydro

Dessert topics

She: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did note that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were extremist, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on religion

He: I come from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been modernized. Naturally, 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 predominantly Islamic. She gave a slight glance 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 implies deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe community?

Eva: I feel like followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the media as engaging in misconduct. It appears a little bit discriminatory, or xenophobic

Takeaway

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

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