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Introducing the Participants

Steve, sixty-four, Essex

Profession: Retired underwriter

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

Amuse bouche: His focus in insurance was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing evacuating people from South Korea because the DPRK have opened the weapon systems”

Eva, 25, London

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Political history: In her native land, New Zealand, she supported both 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 at sea

Initial impressions

Eva: Steve appeared there to have a nice time, to be receptive

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

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

Key disagreement

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that UK residents who already live here, not just white British, face limited access to the essential services, because more and more people are entering. Whereas I just disagree that the numbers are that bad

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I believe that authorities have used immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without raising wages. Pay are suppressed, so levies have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on child support, on schooling, on technology

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and not living here when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a new light. He informed me about EU labor migrants – people could come here and receive solely the wage of the their nation of origin

Steve: Macron spent two years getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Before that, posted workers 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 cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Common ground

He: It would be ideal to have a different energy source, come off of oil. 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 the Scandinavian nation?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to develop eco-friendly systems

She: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to proceed. He was supportive of maintaining domestic drilling for the small amount 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, windfarms and hydro

For afters

She: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did note that a lot of the people in the Arab world were radical, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions based on faith

Steve: I hail from the East End. 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 that local 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 objects to the term, to her it denotes poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a alternative term – maybe community?

She: I feel like Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the media as doing things wrong. It appears a little bit discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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

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