🔗 Share this article

Meeting the Participants

Stephen, sixty-four, Essex

Occupation: Retired insurance professional

Political history: Typically Tory, apart from when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His focus in insurance 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”

Evie, twenty-five, London

Profession: Graduate in psychology

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

Interesting fact: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was half a year, which is a significant duration to be on a boat

Initial impressions

Eva: Steve seemed there to have a nice time, to be open

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

Eva: I had a caprese salad, mushroom pasta, and a rich sweet treat, it was delicious

Key disagreement

Eva: He was certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that UK residents who are native to the area, including non-white white British, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because more and more people are arriving. Whereas I just disagree that the numbers are so problematic

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I believe that governments have used immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without raising wages. Pay are kept low, so levies have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on child support, on schooling, on innovation

She: I don’t have that much knowledge 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 EU labor migrants – candidates could come here and only be paid the salary of the their nation of origin

He: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Before that, posted workers coming in were undermining local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were imported; later it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Common ground

He: It would be great to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, I love the clean air, I love the countryside. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their energy revenues soared after the conflict began, they used that money to develop eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to go about things. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the small amount we’ll require 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, windfarms and water power

Dessert topics

She: We touched on Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about 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 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 gentrified. Obviously, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down that local market, I appear out of place. People gaze 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 Polish-Jewish ancestry – she objects to the term, to her it implies deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe enclave?

Eva: I believe that Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the media as engaging in misconduct. It appears a somewhat discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

He: 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