“I cannae wait to get my kids out of here.”

Easterhouse, a grim council estate in the East End of Glasgow, must once have been an attractive place, set on a green hill on the edge of the city. Now — like the woman I am talking to — it seems frayed, close to despair.

Karen Livingston has a tired face, five children, no job and a cramped home in a grey block overlooking a muddy wasteland where gangs fight most nights with knives and golf clubs. She closes the curtains so the children do not see. She is locked in a desperate feud with a neighbour over allegations of drug dealing. She is on medication for panic attacks. And she is 35. In Easterhouse, that is already old.

We are standing outside a dimly lit, ill-stocked supermarket in the mid-morning rain. The library is shuttered. Even the “regeneration centre” has boarded windows. A small knot of wary local residents has gathered to watch John Mason, the SNP candidate, hand out leaflets at the bus stop.

Some of the huddle are drunk, for the peeling, one-eyed pub next door has been open for an hour. Everyone is smoking. Everyone is angry. Most are angry with Gordon Brown.

The mere mention of the Prime Minister's name provokes a blast of fury from the man standing next to Ms Livingston, a beery explosion of rage of which only the expletives are comprehensible.

Kathleen Conaghan, a large purple stud in her tongue and small Scottish flag in her hand, is more lucid: “My vote is going to the SNP. It's the ones that don't vote that end up letting Labour in.”

If she is representative of her fellow constituents, then Mr Brown is in deep political trouble.

Glasgow East is more than just traditional Labour territory: for five decades the party has taken for granted the support of voters here almost as a feudal right. At the last election, David Marshall, the Labour MP since 1979, was returned with a majority of 13,500. To take the seat, the SNP needs a swing of 22 per cent. But the by-election on July 24, triggered when Mr Marshall resigned because of ill-health, takes place in a changed political landscape. The SNP is in government in Scotland and on a roll. David Cameron has also waded in, calling this the “broken society by-election”, payback for Labour's failure to tackle drug addiction, knife crime and poverty.

After Labour's embarrassing defeat in Crewe & Nantwich and its chronic performance at Henley, Mr Brown's enemies predict that a Labour defeat in Glasgow East would carry such unbearable symbolic weight that the Prime Minister may be forced out.

That apocalyptic vision may be premature, ramped up by a Scottish press that is keen to give this by-election heavy national significance. A combination of tradition, apathy and a strong candidate in Margaret Curran, a Member of the Scottish Parliament, may yet see Labour cling on. But the mere fact that defeat is being contemplated is a sign of how much arteries have hardened in Labour's heartland.

Glasgow East is a hard place to live, and a grotesquely easy place to die. In parts of the constituency, male life expectancy is 54, lower than The Gambia, nearly a decade lower than Bangladesh, and about 24 years below the national average. Move just a few miles to leafy Bearsden and you will live, on average, 30 years longer. Despite this, people here do not and cannot leave. For all Ms Livingston's lament, her kids are stuck in a ghetto ringed by some of the saddest statistics in Britain. Glasgow East has the highest proportion of voters on incapacity benefit or disability allowance and the fewest qualifications in higher education; nearly half the constituency's homes are social housing; and, in parts, unemployment has reached 50 per cent.

Money has been spent on the area, including investment in schools and housing, but the visible effect is negligible. A visit to the drug-drenched estates of Easterhouse prompted Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, to found the think-tank Centre for Social Justice.

Whether the pervasive sense of social injustice in Glasgow East will translate into nationalist votes is more doubtful. Mr Mason has proved an effective city councillor, but in his pinstriped suit on the pavement of Easterhouse he looks oddly out of place: once the rebel on the Scottish political landscape, the SNP has become the party in power.

After an almost comical search for a Labour candidate — the favourite, George Ryan, another city councillor, unexpectedly bowed out citing personal reasons — the party settled on Ms Curran, a former minister in the Scottish Parliament: experienced in the street fight that is Glasgow politics, local and extremely tough. “Ye wouldnae want to take a broken pay packet home tae her,” as one of my Glasgow friends put it.

There is another quality to the East End electorate that is probably best defined by the Scots word “thrawn”, meaning contrary or perverse. If the experts in Westminster are predicting disaster for Mr Brown, then the voters here may well do precisely the opposite, partly out of residual sympathy for an underdog, partly out of defiance, and partly out of habit.

“I've always voted Labour. Always will. Just like my father did,” said Douglas Connor, heading to the shops in Easterhouse. “None of youse is going to tell me how to vote.”

Another important tribal element is religion. Glasgow East is predominantly Roman Catholic, while Mr Mason is a Baptist. The Government's decision to delay the controversial Embryology Bill may prove to be a canny tactic and head off potential resentment.

Inevitably, the Labour campaign is focusing on the rare pockets of success here. To that end, Ms Curran poses manfully among the sporrans and kilts of Britain's largest maker of formal Highland dress, a business that employs 120.

“The things I have to do,” says Ms Curran with a tight smile, holding up a kilt for the cameras.

“What is that tartan?” we ask.

“That,” Tony Burns, general manager of ACS Clothing, says “is the Dress Gordon.”

“Is it popular?”

“Not very,” he says, apparently unaware of the gift he is presenting to the press. “It is just about 8 or 9 per cent.” He shakes his head, and sighs. “No, the Gordon is not too popular.”

Whether Glasgow East changes its political stripes will depend on just how unpopular Gordon has become.

The numbers

Latest poll
SNP 33%
Lab 29%
C 20%
LD 14%

2005 results
Lab 60.7% (18,775)
SNP 11.9% (5,268)
LD 11.9% (3,665)
C 6.9% (2,135)
Turnout: 48.2% (30,939)

Sources: YouGov; Glasgow City Council; Times archives

Times Recommends

• How I lost the gift of joy for a while
• Why Ann Widdecombe has got it wrong
• Alas, it’s the end of the road for petrolheads