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Meeting the Participants

Steve, sixty-four, Essex

Occupation: Former insurance professional

Political history: Usually Tory, apart from when he resided in a left-leaning London borough and supported the SDP

Interesting fact: His specialty in underwriting was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re planning evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have opened the weapon systems”

Evie, twenty-five, London

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her native land, New Zealand, she supported both progressive parties

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a long time to be on a boat

For starters

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

He: She seemed like a very bright, articulate, pleasant person

She: I had a caprese salad, mushroom pasta, and a creamy dessert thing, it was very good

Key disagreement

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that UK residents who already live here, not just white British, face limited access to the essential services, because increasing numbers 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 white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I believe that authorities have exploited immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Wages are suppressed, so taxes have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on childcare, on schooling, on innovation

She: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and not living here when it happened. He clarified it to me in a new light. He told me about EU labor migrants – candidates could come here and only be paid the salary of the their nation of origin

Steve: The French president spent two years getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were imported; since then it’s been hospitality, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be great to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, I love the clean air, I love the countryside. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their oil and gas profits soared after Ukraine started, they used that money to develop green infrastructure

She: So we’re using their oil. 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 coming years. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be advancing to greener solutions, windfarms and water power

Dessert topics

Eva: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did mention that a many individuals in the Arab world were radical, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions based on religion

He: I hail from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to that district, 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 very Muslim. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she doesn’t like that word, to her it implies deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe community?

Eva: I feel like Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the media as engaging in misconduct. It seems a somewhat racist, or xenophobic

Conclusion

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

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