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Meeting the Participants

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 underwriting was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re planning evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have opened the missile silos”

Evie, twenty-five, London

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her home country, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her longest trip was six months, which is a long time to be on a boat

Initial impressions

Eva: Steve appeared there to have a nice time, to be receptive

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

She: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, pasta with fungi, and a rich sweet treat, it was delicious

Key disagreement

Eva: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that British people who are native to the area, including non-white Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the things that they need, because more and more people are entering. However I just disagree that the figures are so problematic

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I believe that authorities have exploited immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Wages are kept low, so levies have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on childcare, on education, on technology

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 new light. He told me about EU labor migrants – 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 two thousand eighteen. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; 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 value fresh atmosphere, I love the countryside. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their oil and gas profits soared after the conflict began, they allocated those funds to develop eco-friendly systems

Eva: 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 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 moving towards greener solutions, turbine fields and hydro

Dessert topics

Eva: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did mention that a many individuals in the Arab world were radical, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on faith

Steve: I hail from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been gentrified. Naturally, I would say that: populated by professionals. 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 segregated area. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she objects to the term, to her it denotes deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe community?

She: I believe that Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It appears a little bit discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

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

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