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Meeting the Participants

Steve, sixty-four, Essex

Profession: Former underwriter

Voting record: Usually Conservative, except when he resided in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His focus in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re planning rescuing people from South Korea because the North Koreans have activated the missile silos”

Eva, twenty-five, the capital

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her native land, New Zealand, she voted a combination of Labour and Green

Interesting fact: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was half a year, which is a long time to be on a boat

For starters

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

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

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

The big beef

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that British people who already live here, including non-white Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are arriving. However I just disagree that the figures 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 exploited immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Wages are suppressed, so levies have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on childcare, on education, on innovation

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was sixteen and not living here when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a new light. He told me about EU labor migrants – people could arrive in the UK and receive solely the salary of the their nation of origin

Steve: Macron spent two years getting the EU to do away with the system; it was revised in 2018. Previously, posted workers coming in were undermining British workers. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were brought in; later it’s been hospitality, 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 alternative power, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, I value fresh atmosphere, I love the countryside. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their oil and gas profits skyrocketed after the conflict began, they allocated those funds to build green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to proceed. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll require in the future. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be moving towards environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and hydro

Dessert topics

She: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did note that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on religion

Steve: I hail from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been modernized. Obviously, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I appear out of place. 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 implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe enclave?

She: I feel like followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the media as engaging in misconduct. It seems a somewhat racist, or xenophobic

Conclusion

He: I think we parted on good terms. We had a hug at the train stop

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