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Introducing the Individuals

Stephen, sixty-four, Essex

Occupation: Former insurance professional

Political history: Typically Conservative, except when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the SDP

Interesting fact: His focus in underwriting was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re planning evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have activated the weapon systems”

Evie, 25, the capital

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her native land, New Zealand, she supported both progressive parties

Interesting fact: 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

For starters

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

Steve: She came across as a very bright, articulate, pleasant person

She: I had a caprese salad, pasta with fungi, and a creamy dessert thing, it was very good

The big beef

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that British people who are native to the area, not just Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are arriving. Whereas I just disagree that the figures are that bad

Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I believe that governments have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Pay are kept low, so taxes have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on technology

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was 16 and not living here when it happened. He clarified it to me in a new light. He informed me about EU labor migrants – people could arrive in the UK and receive solely the wage of the their nation of origin

He: The French president spent two years getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was revised in two thousand eighteen. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undermining local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were imported; since then it’s been service industry, agriculture. She understood that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Common ground

Steve: 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 found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they used that money to develop eco-friendly systems

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 need in the coming years. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards environmentally friendly options, windfarms and hydro

Dessert topics

She: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did mention that a many individuals in the Arab world were radical, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on faith

He: I come from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been modernized. Obviously, 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 gave a slight glance 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 consented to substitute a alternative term – maybe enclave?

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

Takeaway

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

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