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Introducing the Participants

Steve, 64, Essex

Profession: Former insurance professional

Voting record: Typically Tory, apart from when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the SDP

Interesting fact: His focus in underwriting was hostage situations: 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: Psychology graduate

Political history: In her native land, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked 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

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

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

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

The big beef

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that British people who are native to the area, not just white British, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are entering. However I just don’t think the figures are that bad

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I maintain that governments have exploited immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without raising wages. Pay are suppressed, so levies have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on child support, on schooling, on innovation

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and abroad when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a new light. He told me about “posted workers” – people could come here and receive solely the salary of the country they came from

Steve: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the system; it was reformed in 2018. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undermining British workers. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff 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 international colleagues

Sharing plate

He: It would be great to have a alternative power, transition from fossil fuels. I don’t like pollution, I love the clean air, I appreciate rural areas. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their oil and gas profits soared after the conflict began, they used that money to develop eco-friendly systems

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s not a good way to go about things. He was in favour of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity 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 environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and hydro

For afters

Eva: We touched on Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did mention that a many individuals in the Arab world were radical, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on religion

He: I come from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been gentrified. Obviously, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down that local market, I appear out of place. People stare at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. 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 implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe community?

She: I believe that followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It appears a somewhat racist, or xenophobic

Takeaway

Steve: 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