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Introducing the Participants

Stephen, 64, Essex

Profession: Former insurance professional

Political history: Typically Tory, except when he resided in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the SDP

Amuse bouche: His focus in insurance was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re planning rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have activated the missile silos”

Eva, 25, London

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her home country, New Zealand, she supported both Labour and Green

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was half a year, which is a long time to be on a boat

Initial impressions

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

He: She came across as a very intelligent, articulate, pleasant person

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

The big beef

Eva: He was certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that UK residents who are native to the area, including non-white Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the essential services, because more and more people are arriving. However I just don’t think the numbers are so problematic

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I believe that authorities have exploited 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 can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on innovation

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was 16 and abroad when it happened. He explained it to me in a new light. He informed me about “posted workers” – candidates could arrive in the UK and receive solely the wage of the country they came from

Steve: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Before that, posted workers coming in were undermining local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were imported; since then it’s been service industry, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Common ground

He: It would be great to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, 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 soared after the conflict began, they allocated those funds to build eco-friendly systems

She: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to proceed. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll need in the coming years. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be advancing to environmentally friendly options, windfarms and hydro

Dessert topics

Eva: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did note that a lot of the people in the Arab world were extremist, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions based on religion

Steve: I hail from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been gentrified. Naturally, I would say that: full of yuppies. 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 Eastern European roots – she objects to the term, to her it implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I agreed to use a alternative term – maybe enclave?

She: I believe that followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It seems a little bit racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

He: I think we separated amicably. We had a hug at the train stop

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