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Introducing the Individuals

Stephen, 64, Essex

Occupation: Retired insurance professional

Voting record: Usually Conservative, apart from when he resided in a left-leaning London borough and supported the Social Democratic Party

Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing evacuating people from South Korea because the DPRK have opened the missile silos”

Eva, twenty-five, London

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Political history: 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 significant duration to be on a boat

For starters

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

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

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

Key disagreement

Eva: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that UK residents who already live here, including non-white Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because more and more people are entering. Whereas I just disagree that the numbers are so problematic

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I believe that governments have used immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Wages are suppressed, so taxes have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on childcare, on education, on technology

Eva: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was 16 and abroad when it happened. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He told me about EU labor migrants – people could arrive in the UK and only be paid the salary of the their nation of origin

He: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; later it’s been hospitality, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than international colleagues

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be great to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, 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 oil and gas profits skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they used that money to develop eco-friendly systems

She: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to go about things. He was supportive of maintaining domestic drilling for the small amount we’ll require in the future. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, windfarms and hydro

For afters

Eva: We touched on Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did mention that a lot of the people in the Arab world were radical, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on religion

He: I hail from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been gentrified. Naturally, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down that local market, I appear out of place. People stare 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 Eastern European roots – 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 alternative term – maybe enclave?

Eva: I believe that followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It appears a somewhat discriminatory, or xenophobic

Conclusion

He: I think we parted on good terms. We had a embrace at the station

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