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Introducing the Individuals

Stephen, sixty-four, Essex

Occupation: Retired underwriter

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

Interesting fact: His specialty in insurance was hostage situations: “Everyone always says 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 weapon systems”

Eva, 25, the capital

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Voting record: In her home country, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of Labour and Green

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

Initial impressions

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

Steve: She seemed like a very intelligent, articulate, pleasant person

She: I had a caprese salad, 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 British people 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 disagree that 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 maintain that authorities have used immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Wages are kept low, so levies have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on child support, on schooling, on innovation

She: 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 informed me about EU labor migrants – people could come here and receive solely the wage of the their nation of origin

Steve: Macron spent two years getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were brought in; since then 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

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 agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their oil and gas profits skyrocketed after the conflict began, they allocated those funds to build green infrastructure

She: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s not a good way to go about things. He was supportive of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity we’ll require in the coming years. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be advancing to environmentally friendly options, windfarms and water power

Dessert topics

She: We touched on Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did mention that a lot of the people in the Arab world 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 that district, and she said it had been gentrified. Naturally, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down that local market, I look like a foreigner. People gaze at me because it’s become very Muslim. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – 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 enclave?

She: I feel like followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It seems a little bit discriminatory, or xenophobic

Takeaway

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

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