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Meeting the Participants

Stephen, 64, Essex

Profession: Retired insurance professional

Political history: Typically Conservative, except when he resided in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the Social Democratic Party

Amuse bouche: His focus in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re discussing evacuating people from South Korea because the North Koreans have opened the weapon systems”

Evie, twenty-five, London

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her native land, New Zealand, she supported both Labour and Green

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 on a boat

For starters

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

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

Eva: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, 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 are native to the area, including non-white Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the essential services, because more and more people are arriving. Whereas I just don’t think the figures are that bad

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I maintain that authorities have exploited immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Wages are kept low, so levies have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on child support, on education, on innovation

Eva: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was 16 and not living here when it happened. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He told me about “posted workers” – people could arrive in the UK and receive solely the wage of the country they came from

Steve: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was revised in 2018. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undermining local employees. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were imported; since then it’s been service industry, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Common ground

Steve: It would be great to have a different energy source, transition from fossil fuels. I disapprove of environmental harm, I value fresh atmosphere, I appreciate rural areas. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to develop eco-friendly systems

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to go about things. He was supportive of continuing our own oil exploration for the small amount we’ll need in the future. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be advancing to 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 radical ideologies entering – he did note that a many individuals in the Arab world were radical, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on religion

Steve: I hail from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been modernized. Naturally, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I look like a foreigner. People stare at me because it’s become very Muslim. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she doesn’t like that word, 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 feel like Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It appears a little bit discriminatory, or xenophobic

Conclusion

He: 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