Glasgow East By-election: All the fun of the Fair makes for slim pickings on the hustings

SOMETHING is missing from the Glasgow East by-election. Everything at first appears to be in order. Politicians – tick; camera-men – tick; balloons, journalists, press officers, flags, banners, leaflets – tick, tick, tick. Then it dawns on you what is missing. Voters.

Walking down Main Street in the Glasgow suburb of Baillieston at half-past 10 yesterday morning, all that is needed to complete the scene is tumbleweed.

This is the first weekend of the Glasgow Fair, the fortnight when, for decades gone past, the city has upped sticks and headed off for a break – and in Glasgow East, at least, the tradition is alive and well.

Scots Tory leader Annabel Goldie, dressed in a practical Cotton Traders fleece and sensible black slacks, is heading along the road, flanked by the party's candidate Davena Rankin, looking for someone to talk to.

Along the street we walk, all 13 of us: three politicians, four party activists, two press officers, one journalist, three photographers. And no one else. Up ahead, someone suddenly rounds the corner. A member of the public! Sadly not. It is SNP MSP Alex Neil, similarly engaged in an effort to find someone.

It soon emerges that even some of Goldie's entourage aren't from Glasgow. One of the balloon holders has come from the part of the constituency known as Dollar, in the shadow of the Ochil Hills. A Tory man in a tweed flat cap points out that he's from the West End of the city. He turns out to be Andrew Fulton, the party chairman and one time spy. He would be good at disappearing into a crowd – not that this morning we will find out.

Goldie plunges onwards into the famous R&J Chapman butchers, home of the best steak pie in Scotland (2005-6). So enthusiastic has been her campaigning, it turns out she's been in twice already. Proprietor Iain Struthers, Mrs Struthers and teenage daughter Struthers are wheeled out for the cameras. Goldie holds one of the famous pies, while insisting that she doesn't want to buy it.

"Is all this good for business?" an embarrassed David Mundell, shadow Scottish Secretary, asks, motioning to the hullabaloo. "It creates a buzz," says the butcher. "That's good," declares Goldie, rictus grin attached. For the family, there is one issue that counts – the rising cost of living.

"There's been a 30% increase in the price of beef," they point out (although the pies are still only £1.40 – get there while stocks last). "We're having a great time!" she declares. Amazingly, she appears to have convinced herself this is true.

Around the block, Alex Salmond is having more luck finding people. The Garrowhill bowling club is doing steady business, even though most of the locals are more interested in their jack than in Eck. The First Minister has changed into a pair of bleached white bowling shoes and emerges with his own pack of SNP-yellow bowls. He turns out to be a dab hand at the sport, sending his bowls within a few feet of the jack. The candidate, John Mason, has less luck, sending his first bowl into the ditch.

Never outshine the boss, they say. "Labour's support is down in the mouth, they are worried, concerned, they feel let down," says Salmond. "Our support is highly motivated, optimistic, and they want to make a difference and change things for the better."

But by-election central is elsewhere – in the entrance to the Shandwick Square Shopping Centre in Easterhouse. Outside a heavily fortified branch of Haddows (16 cans of lager: £10.49), Labour and the SNP (with four sheepish folk from Solidarity nearby) are doing battle, with burly SNP councillors handing out St Andrew's crosses, and trendy Labour spin doctors, wearing thick-rimmed spectacles, clutching their obligatory A4 hardback notebooks.

Such is the ferocity of the cumulative political ardour, it seems even Easterhouse's notorious neds are intimidated. They stand nearby, in the foyer, smoking their fags. Suddenly there is a cheer and the slight figure of Margaret Curran, Labour candidate, emerges. She and another Labour politician, David Whitton, embrace as if meeting each other on This Is Your Life. And then Curran sprints off in the direction of the Number 19 bus stop where – wait for it – some real people are standing.

A blameless lady called Elizabeth Williamson is startled to discover that her photograph is being taken by about four different photographers, as Curran promises earnestly to do something about Williamson's anger over the fact that the post office is closed tomorrow. If the closure of post offices on a Monday was the key election campaigning theme this week, Curran would have it sown up.

"We are going to prioritise getting the Labour vote out," says Curran afterwards. Labour is expected to make some 20,000 phone calls this week to supporters who say they back them. Meanwhile, the SNP will counter this weekend by rousing an estimated 1,000 activists on to the streets. Activists have been posting personalised letters, signed by Alex Salmond, into the doors of some local residents. "You can't bloody get rid of them," says one lady in the shopping centre. "They just keep ringing up."

The problem – for all parties – however is that, in many cases, the phones might end up ringing out and the letters may go unread.

Most of the East End appears to be either in Blackpool or Benidorm. Back inside the Shandwick Square Shopping Centre, the Muzak echoes around the mostly empty shops and shop assistants stand at the doorway picking their nails.

When no one knows who is around, no one can be sure what is going to happen this Thursday. A nail-biter looks in store.

ANALYSIS: Siege of Fortress Glasgow

Eddie Barnes, Political Editor

CHATTING to journalists at a summer drinks party at the Treasury last Tuesday evening, Alistair Darling was asked whether or not he would be campaigning in the Glasgow East by-election this week.

No, the Chancellor declared; no, he would not. It might have been self-preservation; it might have been a humble recognition that the last person hard-pressed families want to see knocking on their door at the moment is Britain's most powerful tax man. Either way, Darling's non-appearance is certainly wise.

For despite all the hullabaloo about the votes of the constituency's strong Catholic electorate, and despite all Labour's attempts to re-focus the by-election agenda on the gritty issues of law and order, the result on Thursday will be settled mostly by traditional pound-in-your-pocket issues – not an area in which Darling has been excelling of late.

The apocalyptic caricature of Glasgow East as a kind of Darfur-with-drizzle is a long way off the mark. The constituency is, for the most part, a respectable working-class area, where the cost of living and the cost of fuel are the main preoccupations. Who is best placed to end the pain: Salmond, or Darling and Brown? The answer will decide Thursday's result.

Salmond has fought a typically fleet-of-foot campaign, taking on the powerful Labour argument put forward at every Westminster election in Scotland that an SNP vote is a wasted one. Not so, argues the First Minister: vote for the SNP, and you will send out a message to London – that, for example, Darling's 2p freeze on fuel last week wasn't enough. Give Labour a fright and they will bend, he says.

It has worked before, points out Winnie Ewing, winner of the famous Hamilton by-election 40 years ago, and it will work again. Salmond's coup-de-grace last week was to suggest to Glasgow East's Labour wobblers that an SNP victory would not trigger Gordon Brown's demise. Thus a seed was planted in their minds – that they could give 'their' Gordon a boot, without him ending up on the floor.

Whether or not Salmond actually believes this is a moot point. Certainly, Conservative shadow ministers in London are worried he's wrong. Brown's dismal poll ratings are now being seen as their ticket to Number 10, and that has led them to have mixed feelings about Thursday. "The last thing we want is for Labour to lose this by-election and for Brown to go," said one shadow cabinet minister last week. "It would be much better if Labour were to win it – then at least he might stay on."

It might be too late for that, pessimistic Labour ministers add. One minister privately suggested last week that Brown was doomed whatever the result in Glasgow. "My feeling is that Gordon is going whether or not we win or lose Glasgow. There is virtually no support for him left," said the MP. According to this view, it appears Labour voters who are worried about inflicting damage on Brown by switching to the SNP need not worry: they would just be kicking a corpse.

Quite how many of these Labour voters are considering heading straight over to the Nationalists, no one can be sure. Paranoid Labour canvassers say they fear 'their' people are lying to them when they say they are staying "loyal". In the privacy of the polling booth, they warn, their views may be different. Other Labour people are more confident, pointing to the area's close-knit community values where voting Labour remains second nature. They insist that the announcement of a radical shake-up of the welfare system, leaked on Friday last week, will actually help their vote, not hinder it. On balance, most Labour canvassers who have been treading the streets on Thursday still believe they will win – but only just. "A few hundred votes, that's all," said one MSP. The old clichés still ring true: whether or not Labour can get their vote out will be vital.

A Labour win will be met by little more than relief within the bedraggled party. Then it will be put to bed immediately as it starts the real business of the summer, that of trying to find somebody – anybody – to lead them north of the border. An SNP win, on the other hand, will be a hammer blow to Labour. Not to Gordon Brown perhaps, whose real concerns lie in middle England, and who may be sunk regardless. But the damage to Scottish Labour would be immense.

After their defeat last year, Labour folk clung to the fact that they could still retreat into what they called "Fortress Glasgow". If they lose the East End on Thursday, the fortress will have been breached.