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Meeting the Participants

Stephen, 64, Essex

Profession: Retired underwriter

Political history: Typically Conservative, apart from when he resided in a left-leaning London borough 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 planning rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have opened the missile silos”

Evie, 25, London

Occupation: Psychology graduate

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

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a long time to be at sea

For starters

Eva: Steve appeared focused on enjoying the meal, to be open

Steve: She came across as a very bright, articulate, nice person

Eva: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, pasta with fungi, and a rich sweet treat, it was very good

The big beef

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that British people who are native to the area, not just Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are arriving. However I just disagree that the numbers are that bad

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I maintain that authorities have used immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without raising wages. 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 innovation

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was sixteen and abroad when it happened. He explained it to me in a new light. He told me about EU labor migrants – people could come here and receive solely the wage of the their nation of origin

Steve: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the system; it was revised in 2018. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were brought in; since then it’s been hospitality, farms. 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 ideal to have a different energy source, transition from fossil fuels. I don’t like pollution, I value fresh atmosphere, I appreciate rural areas. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after the conflict began, they used that money to develop eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s not a good way to proceed. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll require in the coming years. I partially concur 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 briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did mention that a many individuals in the Arab world were extremist, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s prejudiced 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. Obviously, 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 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 alternative term – maybe enclave?

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

Conclusion

He: I think we parted on good terms. We had a hug at the train stop

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