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Introducing the Participants

Stephen, 64, Essex

Occupation: Retired underwriter

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

Amuse bouche: His focus in insurance was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing evacuating people from South Korea because the North Koreans have opened the missile silos”

Evie, 25, the capital

Profession: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her home country, New Zealand, she supported both progressive parties

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her longest trip was six months, which is a long time to be at sea

Initial impressions

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

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

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

The big beef

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that UK residents who already live here, including non-white white British, face limited access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are arriving. Whereas I just disagree that the numbers are that bad

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I believe that governments have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff 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 schooling, on technology

Eva: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was sixteen and not living here when it happened. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about EU labor migrants – people could come here and receive solely the wage of the country they came from

He: The French president spent two years getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was reformed in 2018. Previously, posted workers coming in were undermining local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff 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 earning significantly higher than international colleagues

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be great to have a alternative power, transition from fossil fuels. I disapprove of environmental harm, I value fresh atmosphere, I love the countryside. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after the conflict began, they used that money to develop eco-friendly systems

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 small amount we’ll require in the coming years. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be advancing to greener solutions, windfarms and hydro

For afters

Eva: 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 didn’t think fair. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on faith

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: full of yuppies. But when I go down that local market, I appear out of place. People gaze at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – 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 different word – maybe community?

Eva: I believe that followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It seems a somewhat racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

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

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