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Introducing the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Essex

Occupation: Retired underwriter

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

Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have opened the weapon systems”

Evie, 25, the capital

Profession: Graduate in psychology

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

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a long time to be on a boat

For starters

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

He: She came across as a very bright, articulate, pleasant person

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

The big beef

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that British people who already live here, not just white British, 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 so problematic

He: 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 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 are unable to improve services – spend more money on childcare, on education, 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 different perspective. He told me about EU labor migrants – people could come here and only be paid the wage of the country they came from

Steve: The French president spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in 2018. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were brought in; later it’s been service industry, agriculture. 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 different energy source, transition from fossil fuels. I don’t like pollution, I value fresh atmosphere, I appreciate rural areas. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their energy revenues soared after the conflict began, they used that money to build green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s not a good way to proceed. He was supportive of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity 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 moving towards environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and water power

For afters

She: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did note that a many individuals in the Arab world were extremist, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on faith

He: I hail 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 very Muslim. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a alternative term – maybe enclave?

Eva: I believe that Muslim people are really overrepresented in the media as engaging in misconduct. It appears a little bit racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

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

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