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Meeting the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Essex

Profession: Former insurance professional

Political history: Typically Tory, apart from when he resided in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His specialty in insurance was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re planning rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have activated the weapon systems”

Eva, twenty-five, the capital

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her home country, New Zealand, she supported both progressive parties

Interesting fact: 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, well-spoken, pleasant person

Eva: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, pasta with fungi, and a creamy dessert thing, it was delicious

Key disagreement

Eva: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that British people who are native to the area, not just Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are entering. However I just disagree that the numbers are so problematic

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I maintain that authorities have used 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 – spend more money on childcare, on schooling, on innovation

She: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was sixteen and abroad when it occurred. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about EU labor migrants – candidates could arrive in the UK and receive solely the wage of the country they came from

Steve: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was revised in 2018. Before that, posted workers coming in were undermining British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were brought in; since then it’s been service industry, agriculture. She understood that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Sharing plate

He: It would be great to have a different energy source, come off of oil. 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 the conflict began, they used that money to develop 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 continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll require in the coming years. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, turbine fields and water power

For afters

Eva: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did note that a lot of the people in the Arab world were radical, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments 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 gentrified. Naturally, 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 predominantly Islamic. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she objects to the term, to her it denotes poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe enclave?

She: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the media as doing things wrong. It appears a somewhat racist, 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