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Introducing the Individuals

Steve, sixty-four, Essex

Occupation: Retired insurance professional

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

Amuse bouche: His specialty in insurance was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re planning rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have activated the weapon systems”

Eva, twenty-five, the capital

Profession: Psychology graduate

Political history: In her home country, Aotearoa, she supported both 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 open

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

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

Key disagreement

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that British people who already live here, not just white British, face limited access to the essential services, because more and more people are entering. Whereas I just disagree that the numbers are that bad

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I believe that governments have used immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Pay are suppressed, so levies have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on childcare, on education, on innovation

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and abroad when it happened. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He told me about EU labor migrants – candidates could arrive in the UK and only be paid the wage of the country they came from

He: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was reformed in 2018. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undermining British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were imported; later it’s been hospitality, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Common ground

Steve: It would be great to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, I love the clean air, I appreciate rural areas. 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 Ukraine started, they used that money to develop eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to proceed. He was supportive of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity we’ll require in the future. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be moving towards environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and water power

For afters

She: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did note that a many individuals in the Arab world were extremist, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on faith

He: I come from the eastern part of London. 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 gaze 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 Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it implies deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe enclave?

She: I feel like Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the media as engaging in misconduct. It appears a somewhat discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

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

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