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Introducing the Individuals

Steve, 64, Essex

Profession: Former insurance professional

Voting record: Typically Conservative, apart from when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the SDP

Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re discussing rescuing people from South Korea because the DPRK have activated the missile silos”

Eva, twenty-five, London

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her home country, Aotearoa, she supported both progressive parties

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

Initial impressions

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

He: She came across as a very bright, 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 certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that UK residents who already live here, including non-white white British, face limited access to the things that they need, because more and more people are arriving. However I just don’t think the figures are so problematic

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I believe that governments have exploited immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Pay are kept low, so levies have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on child support, on education, on technology

She: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was 16 and not living here when it happened. He clarified it to me in a new light. He told me about “posted workers” – people could come here and receive solely the salary of the country they came from

He: Macron spent two years getting the EU to abolish 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; since then it’s been service industry, farms. She understood 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 different energy source, transition from fossil fuels. I disapprove of environmental harm, I value fresh atmosphere, I appreciate rural areas. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to build eco-friendly systems

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to go about things. He was supportive of maintaining domestic drilling for the small amount we’ll need in the future. 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

Dessert topics

She: We touched on 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 didn’t think accurate. I think it’s discriminatory 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: full of yuppies. But when I go down that local market, I appear out of place. People stare 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 Eastern European roots – she objects to the term, to her it denotes poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe enclave?

She: I feel like Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It seems a somewhat racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

He: I think we separated amicably. We had a embrace at the station

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