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Introducing the Participants

Steve, sixty-four, Essex

Profession: Retired underwriter

Political history: Usually Tory, apart from when he resided in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the Social Democratic Party

Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re discussing rescuing people from South Korea because the DPRK have opened the weapon systems”

Evie, twenty-five, London

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Political history: In her home country, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of Labour and Green

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was half a year, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

For starters

She: Steve seemed there to have a nice time, to be open

Steve: She came across as a very intelligent, well-spoken, pleasant person

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

The big beef

Eva: He was certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that British people who already live here, including non-white white British, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are entering. However I just disagree that 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 warm beer. But I believe that authorities have exploited immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without raising wages. Wages are suppressed, so levies have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on childcare, on education, on technology

She: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was sixteen and not living here when it happened. He clarified it to me in a new light. He told 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 two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in 2018. Before that, posted workers coming in were undermining local employees. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were imported; later it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than international colleagues

Common ground

He: It would be ideal to have a different energy source, transition from fossil fuels. 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 the Scandinavian nation?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after the conflict began, they used that money to build green infrastructure

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 need in the future. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be advancing to greener solutions, turbine fields and hydro

Dessert topics

Eva: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did note that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on faith

He: I hail from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been modernized. Obviously, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I appear out of place. People gaze at me because it’s become very Muslim. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it denotes deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a alternative term – maybe enclave?

She: I feel like followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It appears a little bit discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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

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