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Meeting the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Essex

Profession: Retired insurance professional

Voting record: Typically Conservative, apart from when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the SDP

Amuse bouche: His focus in insurance was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it 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 supported both progressive parties

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

For starters

Eva: Steve seemed there to have a nice time, to be open

Steve: She seemed like a very intelligent, well-spoken, nice person

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

Key disagreement

Eva: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that British people who already live here, including non-white Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are entering. However I just disagree that the figures are that bad

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I believe that governments have exploited immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Pay are suppressed, so taxes have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on childcare, on schooling, on innovation

Eva: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and abroad when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a new light. He informed me about “posted workers” – candidates could come here and receive solely the wage of the country they came from

He: Macron spent two years getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was revised in 2018. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were brought in; later it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She grasped 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, transition from fossil fuels. I disapprove of environmental harm, I love the clean air, 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 develop eco-friendly systems

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s not a good way to proceed. He was supportive of maintaining domestic drilling for the small amount we’ll need in the coming years. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be advancing to 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 mention that a lot of the people in the Arab world were extremist, which I didn’t think 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 predominantly Islamic. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she objects to the term, to her it implies deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe community?

She: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the media as engaging in misconduct. It appears a somewhat racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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

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