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Introducing the Individuals

Stephen, 64, Essex

Occupation: Retired underwriter

Political history: Usually Tory, apart from when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and supported the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His focus in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re planning evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have activated the missile silos”

Evie, 25, London

Profession: Psychology graduate

Political history: In her home country, New Zealand, she voted a combination of progressive parties

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

For starters

Eva: Steve appeared there to have a nice time, to be receptive

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

Eva: I had a caprese salad, pasta with fungi, and a creamy dessert thing, it was very good

Key disagreement

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that British people who already live here, including non-white white British, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because more and more people are arriving. However I just disagree that the numbers are that bad

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I maintain that authorities have used immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Pay are kept low, so levies have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on child support, on schooling, on technology

She: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was 16 and abroad when it occurred. He explained it to me in a new light. He informed me about “posted workers” – candidates could arrive in the UK and only be paid the wage of the their nation of origin

Steve: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the system; it was reformed in 2018. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undermining local employees. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were brought in; later it’s been service industry, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Common ground

Steve: It would be great to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, I value fresh atmosphere, I love the countryside. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their oil and gas profits soared after the conflict began, they allocated those funds to develop eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s not a good way to go about things. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity 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 greener solutions, windfarms and hydro

Dessert topics

Eva: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did mention that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were extremist, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions based on religion

He: I come 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: full of yuppies. But when I go down Chrisp Street 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 deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I agreed to use a alternative term – maybe community?

Eva: I believe that followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It appears a somewhat discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

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

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