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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 insurance was hostage situations: People often claim 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 missile silos”

Eva, 25, London

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her home country, New Zealand, she supported both Labour and Green

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her longest trip was half a year, which is a long time to be on a boat

Initial impressions

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

He: She came across as a very intelligent, well-spoken, nice person

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

The big beef

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that UK residents who are native to the area, including non-white white British, face limited access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are entering. Whereas I just disagree that the numbers are that bad

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I maintain that authorities have exploited immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Pay are kept low, so taxes have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on child support, on schooling, on technology

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and abroad when it occurred. He explained it to me in a new light. He informed me about “posted workers” – people could arrive in the UK and receive solely 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, posted workers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were imported; later it’s been hospitality, agriculture. 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 ideal to have a different energy source, transition from fossil fuels. I don’t like pollution, I love the clean air, I love the countryside. We found consensus 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 used that money to build eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s not a good way to proceed. He was in favour of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity we’ll need in the coming years. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be advancing to environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and hydro

For afters

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

Steve: I come from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to that district, 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 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 different word – maybe community?

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

Takeaway

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

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