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Meeting the Participants

Stephen, 64, Essex

Occupation: Retired insurance professional

Voting record: Usually Tory, apart from when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the Social Democratic Party

Amuse bouche: His focus in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re discussing rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have activated the weapon systems”

Evie, twenty-five, the capital

Profession: Graduate in psychology

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

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

Initial impressions

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

Steve: She seemed like a very intelligent, articulate, nice person

Eva: I had a caprese salad, mushroom pasta, and a rich sweet treat, it was very good

Key disagreement

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that UK residents who already live here, not just Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the essential services, because more and more people are entering. Whereas I just disagree that the figures are so problematic

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I maintain that governments have used immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Wages are suppressed, so taxes have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on child support, on schooling, on technology

Eva: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was sixteen and abroad when it happened. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about “posted workers” – candidates could arrive in the UK and receive solely the salary of the country they came from

He: The French president spent two years getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was reformed in 2018. Previously, posted workers coming in were undermining British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; later it’s been service industry, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Common ground

He: It would be great to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, I love the clean air, I love the countryside. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their energy revenues soared after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to build green infrastructure

She: 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 require in the future. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be advancing to environmentally friendly options, windfarms and hydro

Dessert topics

Eva: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did note that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on faith

Steve: I come from the East End. 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 look like a foreigner. People gaze at me because it’s become very Muslim. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word segregated area. 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 their own.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe community?

She: I believe that Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the media as doing things wrong. It seems a little bit racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

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

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