🔗 Share this article

Meeting the Participants

Stephen, 64, Essex

Profession: Retired insurance professional

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

Interesting fact: His specialty in insurance was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re planning rescuing people from South Korea because the DPRK have activated the missile silos”

Evie, twenty-five, the capital

Occupation: Psychology graduate

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

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a long time to be on a boat

Initial impressions

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

Steve: She came across as a very bright, well-spoken, nice person

She: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, pasta with fungi, and a creamy dessert thing, it was delicious

Key disagreement

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that British people who already live here, including non-white Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because more and more people are entering. However I just don’t think the numbers are so problematic

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I believe that authorities have used immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Wages are kept low, so taxes have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on child support, on education, on innovation

Eva: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was sixteen and abroad when it happened. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about “posted workers” – candidates could arrive in the UK and only be paid the wage of the country they came from

Steve: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was reformed in 2018. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were imported; since then it’s been hospitality, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was earning significantly higher than international colleagues

Sharing plate

He: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, transition from fossil fuels. I disapprove of environmental harm, I value fresh atmosphere, 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 skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to develop eco-friendly systems

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to proceed. He was in favour of maintaining domestic drilling for the small amount 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

She: We touched on 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 prejudiced to form opinions based on religion

He: I hail from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been gentrified. Naturally, 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 very Muslim. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she doesn’t like that word, to her it implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I agreed to use a alternative term – maybe community?

She: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the media as engaging in misconduct. It seems a somewhat racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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

She: We both said that we’d had a lovely time