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Meeting the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Canvey Island

Profession: Retired underwriter

Political history: Typically Tory, except when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and supported the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His focus in underwriting was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re planning evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have activated the weapon systems”

Evie, twenty-five, London

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her native land, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of Labour and Green

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a significant duration to be at sea

Initial impressions

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

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

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

Key disagreement

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that UK residents who already live here, not just Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are arriving. However I just don’t think 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 maintain that governments have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. 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

Eva: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was sixteen and not living here when it occurred. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about EU labor migrants – people could come here and only be paid the wage of the their nation of origin

Steve: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was revised in 2018. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were imported; since then it’s been service industry, 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 great to have a alternative power, come off of oil. 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 the conflict began, they used that money to develop eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to go about things. He was supportive of continuing our own oil exploration for the small amount we’ll require in the future. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be advancing to environmentally friendly options, windfarms and hydro

For afters

She: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did note that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on religion

Steve: 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 that local market, I appear out of place. People gaze at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she objects to the term, to her it denotes poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a alternative term – maybe community?

She: I believe that followers of Islam are really overrepresented in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It seems a somewhat discriminatory, or xenophobic

Conclusion

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

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