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Introducing the Participants

Steve, 64, Essex

Profession: Former insurance professional

Voting record: Usually Conservative, except when he resided in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the SDP

Amuse bouche: His focus in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re planning evacuating people from South Korea because the DPRK have activated the missile silos”

Evie, 25, the capital

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her native land, New Zealand, she voted a combination of Labour and Green

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a long time to be at sea

For starters

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

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

Eva: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, pasta with fungi, and a creamy dessert thing, it was delicious

Key disagreement

Eva: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that UK residents who are native to the area, including non-white Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are entering. Whereas I just disagree that the numbers are that bad

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I maintain that authorities have used immigration to fill the jobs they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Wages are kept low, so taxes have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on technology

Eva: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was 16 and abroad when it occurred. He explained it to me in a new light. He informed me about “posted workers” – people could come here and receive solely the wage of the country they came from

Steve: The French president spent two years getting the EU to do away with the system; it was reformed in 2018. Previously, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were imported; later it’s been service industry, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was earning significantly higher than international colleagues

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be ideal to have a different energy source, transition from fossil fuels. I don’t like pollution, 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 oil and gas profits skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to develop green infrastructure

She: So we’re using their oil. 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 rely on air travel. We both think we should be advancing to greener solutions, turbine fields and hydro

For afters

She: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did note 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

He: I hail 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 Chrisp Street market, I appear out of place. People stare 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 Polish-Jewish ancestry – she objects to the term, to her it denotes poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe community?

She: I believe that followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It seems a somewhat racist, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

He: I think we separated amicably. We had a hug at the train stop

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