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Meeting the Participants

Stephen, 64, Essex

Profession: Former underwriter

Political history: Usually Tory, apart from when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the SDP

Interesting fact: His specialty in underwriting was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re planning evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have activated the missile silos”

Eva, 25, the capital

Profession: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her native land, New Zealand, she supported both Labour and Green

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her longest trip was six months, which is a long time to be on a boat

For starters

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

He: She seemed like a very intelligent, articulate, pleasant 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 thinks that British people who are native to the area, not just white British, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are entering. However I just disagree that the figures are that bad

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I believe that governments have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without raising wages. Pay are kept low, so taxes have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on childcare, on education, on innovation

She: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and not living here when it occurred. He explained it to me in a new light. He told me about “posted workers” – people could come here and only be paid the wage of the country they came from

Steve: Macron spent two years getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undermining local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were imported; since then it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Sharing plate

He: It would be ideal to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, 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 skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they used that money to build eco-friendly systems

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s not a good way to go about things. He was supportive of maintaining domestic drilling for the small amount we’ll require in the coming years. 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 hydro

Dessert topics

Eva: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did note that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were extremist, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on religion

Steve: I hail from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been modernized. 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 predominantly Islamic. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she objects to the term, to her it denotes poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe enclave?

She: I believe that followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the media as engaging in misconduct. It seems a somewhat racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

Steve: I think we parted on good terms. We had a hug at the station

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