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Introducing the Individuals

Steve, 64, Essex

Occupation: Retired insurance professional

Political history: Typically Conservative, except when he resided in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His focus in insurance was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re planning rescuing people from South Korea because the North Koreans have opened the missile silos”

Evie, twenty-five, London

Profession: Psychology graduate

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

Interesting fact: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her longest trip was six months, which is a significant duration to be at sea

For starters

Eva: Steve appeared focused on enjoying the meal, to be open

He: She seemed like a very bright, well-spoken, nice person

Eva: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, pasta with fungi, and a rich sweet treat, it was very good

Key disagreement

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that British people who already live here, not just white British, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because more and more people are entering. However I just don’t think the figures are so problematic

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I believe that authorities have used immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Pay are kept low, so taxes have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on child support, on education, on innovation

Eva: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was sixteen and not living here when it happened. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He told me about EU labor migrants – candidates could come here and only be paid the salary of the country they came from

He: Macron spent two years getting the EU to do away with the system; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Previously, posted workers coming in were undermining local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff 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 workers from other countries

Sharing plate

He: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, transition from fossil fuels. I don’t like pollution, I value fresh atmosphere, I love the countryside. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to develop green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to go about things. He was supportive of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity we’ll need in the future. I partially concur 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

Dessert topics

Eva: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about extremism coming here – he did note that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were extremist, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on faith

He: 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 that local market, I appear out of place. People gaze 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 their own.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe enclave?

Eva: I believe that followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It seems a little bit discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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

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