Dining across the divide: I said Trump's a bit of a despot and shouldn't have had a state visit to the UK'

"Stuart thought we shouldn't pander to Donald Trump we don't agree with him, and we should take more of a principled stance, not flatter him with state visits and pomp and pageantry and stuff like that. It's noticeable that Trump changed his line on Ukraine right after the state visit. Whether that's coincidence or causal, I don't know. He's the democratically elected leader of America, so we have to accept that and accommodate it."

"Stuart He felt the Labour government and Keir Starmer had played that quite well. My point of view is that Trump's a bit of a despot and an authoritarian. We've voted for a Labour government, we pay our taxes, we support our government we want to feel represented by them. I didn't feel that honouring Trump with a state visit was very representative of the views of most Labour voters."

One subject is a general practitioner who has voted Labour at every general election and once wanted to vote Liberal Democrat in 2010 but was two months too young. The other is a 39-year-old history and politics teacher from London who has always voted Labour and expects to vote Labour again in 2029, reluctantly because of first-past-the-post. The pair shared bao buns, edamame and spicy noodles and described personal details: a parental-leave road trip from Melbourne to Adelaide in a camper van and a friend-run sound system that launched a club night in Brixton. The two disagree about honouring Donald Trump with a state visit: one argues for diplomatic accommodation of a democratically elected leader and notes policy shifts after the visit, while the other calls the visit appeasement and unrepresentative of most Labour voters.

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