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Meeting the Participants

Steve, 64, Essex

Occupation: Former insurance professional

Voting record: Typically Conservative, except when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the Social Democratic Party

Amuse bouche: His focus in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re planning evacuating people from South Korea because the North Koreans have activated the missile silos”

Evie, 25, London

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her native land, Aotearoa, she supported both progressive parties

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

For starters

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

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

Eva: I had a caprese salad, mushroom pasta, and a creamy dessert thing, it was very good

The big beef

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, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because more and more people are entering. However I just don’t think the figures are that bad

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I believe that governments have exploited immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Wages are kept low, so levies have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on childcare, on schooling, on innovation

Eva: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and abroad when it occurred. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He told me about “posted workers” – candidates could come here and only be paid the salary of the country they came from

He: The French president spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in 2018. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undermining local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were imported; since then it’s been service industry, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Common ground

Steve: It would be great 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 agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their oil and gas profits soared after Ukraine started, they used that money to develop green infrastructure

She: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s not a good way to proceed. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the small amount 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 moving towards environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and water power

Dessert topics

Eva: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did note that a lot of the people in the Arab world were radical, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on faith

He: I come from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been modernized. Naturally, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I appear out of place. People stare at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it denotes deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe community?

She: I feel like followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It seems a somewhat discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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

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