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Meeting the Participants

Steve, 64, Essex

Occupation: Retired insurance professional

Political history: Usually Conservative, apart from when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the SDP

Interesting fact: His focus in insurance was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re discussing evacuating people from South Korea because the DPRK have activated the missile silos”

Eva, 25, London

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her home country, New Zealand, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Interesting fact: Eva has worked as a singer on ocean liners; her longest trip was six months, which is a significant duration to be at sea

For starters

She: Steve seemed there to have a nice time, to be receptive

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

Eva: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, mushroom pasta, and a rich sweet treat, it was delicious

The big beef

Eva: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that British people who already live here, not just Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are arriving. Whereas I just disagree that the numbers are so problematic

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with tepid ale. But I believe that governments have exploited immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without raising wages. Wages are suppressed, so levies have to be kept low, so we are unable to improve services – spend more money on child support, on education, on innovation

She: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and not living here when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about EU labor migrants – candidates could come here and only be paid the wage of the their nation of origin

Steve: The French president spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; 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 brought in; later it’s been hospitality, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Sharing plate

He: It would be ideal to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, I love the clean air, 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 skyrocketed after the conflict began, they used that money to develop green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to go about things. He was supportive of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity 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 advancing to greener solutions, turbine fields and hydro

Dessert topics

Eva: We touched on Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did note that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions 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 gentrified. 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 very Muslim. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she doesn’t like that word, to her it implies deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe enclave?

She: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It seems a little bit discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

Steve: I think we separated amicably. We had a embrace at the train stop

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