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Meeting the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Essex

Occupation: Former insurance professional

Voting record: Typically Tory, except when he resided in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His focus in insurance was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re planning evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have opened the weapon systems”

Eva, 25, the capital

Profession: Psychology graduate

Political history: In her home country, New Zealand, she supported both Labour and Green

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her longest trip was half a year, which is a significant duration to be at sea

Initial impressions

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

Steve: She seemed like a very intelligent, well-spoken, nice person

Eva: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, pasta with fungi, and a rich sweet treat, it was very good

The big beef

Eva: He was certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that British people who are native to the area, not just white British, face limited access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are entering. However I just don’t think the figures are so problematic

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I believe that governments have exploited immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Pay are suppressed, so taxes have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on childcare, on education, on innovation

She: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and abroad when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a new light. He told me about “posted workers” – candidates could arrive in the UK and receive solely the salary of the their nation of origin

Steve: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the system; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Previously, posted workers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; since then it’s been hospitality, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be great to have a alternative power, transition from fossil fuels. I disapprove of environmental harm, I love the clean air, I appreciate rural areas. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after the conflict began, they allocated those funds to build eco-friendly systems

She: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to proceed. He was supportive of continuing our own oil exploration for the small amount we’ll need in the future. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, turbine fields and hydro

For afters

She: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did mention that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments 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. Obviously, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down that local market, I look like a foreigner. 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 implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a alternative term – maybe community?

Eva: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It seems a somewhat discriminatory, or xenophobic

Conclusion

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

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