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Meeting the Participants

Steve, 64, Essex

Occupation: Retired underwriter

Political history: Usually Tory, apart from when he resided in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the SDP

Interesting fact: His specialty in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re planning evacuating people from South Korea because the DPRK have activated the weapon systems”

Eva, 25, the capital

Profession: Graduate in psychology

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

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

Initial impressions

She: Steve appeared focused on enjoying the meal, to be receptive

He: She seemed like a very intelligent, articulate, pleasant person

Eva: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, mushroom pasta, and a rich sweet treat, it was delicious

The big beef

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that British people who already live here, not just Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the things that they need, because more and more people are arriving. Whereas I just don’t think the numbers are that bad

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I maintain that authorities have used immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without raising wages. Pay are suppressed, so levies have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on child support, on schooling, on innovation

She: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and not living here when it occurred. 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 salary of the country they came from

He: Macron spent two years getting the EU to do away with the system; it was revised in 2018. Before that, posted workers coming in were undermining British workers. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were imported; since then it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be great to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, I value fresh atmosphere, I love the countryside. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their oil and gas profits soared after the conflict began, they used that money to build green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. 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

For afters

Eva: We touched on Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – 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 faith

He: I come from the East End. 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 that local 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 objects to the term, to her it denotes deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe community?

Eva: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the media as engaging in misconduct. It appears a little bit racist, or xenophobic

Takeaway

Steve: I think we parted on good terms. We had a hug at the train stop

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