Introducing the Participants
Steve, 64, Essex
Profession: Retired underwriter
Voting record: Typically Tory, apart from when he resided in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the SDP
Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re planning rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have activated the missile silos”
Evie, twenty-five, the capital
Occupation: Graduate in psychology
Political history: In her native land, Aotearoa, she supported both Labour and Green
Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her longest trip was half a year, which is a significant duration to be at sea
For starters
Eva: Steve appeared focused on enjoying the meal, to be receptive
Steve: She seemed like a very bright, articulate, nice person
She: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, mushroom pasta, and a creamy dessert thing, it was delicious
Key disagreement
She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that UK residents who already live here, including non-white Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the essential services, because more and more people are entering. Whereas I just disagree that the numbers are so problematic
Steve: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live 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 increasing salaries. Wages are suppressed, so levies have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on technology
She: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and abroad when it happened. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He told me about “posted workers” – people could come here and only be paid the salary of the their nation of origin
He: The French president spent 24 months getting the EU to abolish the scheme; it was reformed in 2018. Previously, posted workers coming in were undermining local employees. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were brought in; 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
He: It would be ideal to have a different energy source, transition from fossil fuels. I disapprove of environmental harm, I love the clean air, I love the countryside. We agreed 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 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 continuing our own oil exploration 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 moving towards environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and water power
Dessert topics
Eva: We touched on Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about extremism coming here – he did mention that a many individuals in the Arab world were radical, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions based on religion
Steve: I hail from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been gentrified. Obviously, I would say that: full of yuppies. 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 objects to the term, to her it implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a alternative term – maybe enclave?
She: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the media as doing things wrong. It appears a little bit racist, or xenophobic
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 wonderful evening
