🔗 Share this article

Meeting the Participants

Steve, 64, Essex

Occupation: Former underwriter

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

Interesting fact: His specialty in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re discussing rescuing people from South Korea because the DPRK have opened the missile silos”

Evie, 25, London

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Political history: In her native land, New Zealand, she supported both Labour and Green

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her longest trip was half a year, which is a significant duration to be at sea

Initial impressions

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

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

She: I had a caprese salad, pasta with fungi, and a rich sweet treat, it was delicious

The big beef

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that British people who are native to the area, not just white British, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because more and more people are arriving. However I just don’t think the numbers are that bad

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I maintain that authorities have exploited immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do 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 schooling, on innovation

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and not living here when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He told me about EU labor migrants – people could arrive in the UK and receive solely the salary of the country they came from

He: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; later it’s been hospitality, farms. 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

Steve: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, I love the clean air, I appreciate rural areas. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” 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 proceed. He was in favour of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity we’ll need in the coming years. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, windfarms and hydro

Dessert topics

Eva: We touched on Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about extremism coming here – he did note that a lot of the people in the Arab world were radical, which I didn’t think 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 modernized. Naturally, 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 very Muslim. She gave a slight glance 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 theirs.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe enclave?

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

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