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Meeting the Participants

Steve, 64, Essex

Occupation: Former underwriter

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

Interesting fact: His specialty in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re planning rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have opened the missile silos”

Evie, twenty-five, London

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her home country, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of Labour and Green

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

For starters

She: Steve appeared focused on enjoying the meal, to be receptive

Steve: She seemed like a very bright, well-spoken, pleasant person

She: 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 believes that British people who already live here, including non-white white British, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are arriving. Whereas I just don’t think the figures are that bad

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I maintain that governments have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Pay are suppressed, so levies have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on childcare, on education, on technology

She: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was sixteen and abroad when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about “posted workers” – candidates could come here and only be paid the salary of the their nation of origin

Steve: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the system; it was reformed in 2018. Before that, posted workers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; later it’s been service industry, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Common ground

Steve: 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 found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to develop eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to proceed. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the small amount we’ll need in the future. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be moving towards environmentally friendly options, windfarms and water power

For afters

She: We touched on Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did note that a lot of the people in the Arab world were radical, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on religion

Steve: 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. Naturally, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I look like a foreigner. People stare at me because it’s become very Muslim. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she objects to the term, to her it implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe community?

Eva: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the media as doing things wrong. It appears a somewhat discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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

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