George Osborne, the Conservative Shadow Chancellor, yesterday headed to Glasgow North East in search of the Tory working-class vote. Lest anyone should imagine that searching for the Tory working-class vote must be an unrewarding occupation in Glasgow North East these days, Mr Osborne was anxious to disabuse them.

He chose to focus his attention on the Railcare train depot in Springburn, one of the biggest employers in the area, with a 180-strong workforce. It may be a far cry from its heyday in the 1930s and 1940s when two thousand men were employed in building steam trains here, but in an area where male unemployment runs at 18 per cent, Railcare is a beacon of hope.

Mr Osborne was enthusiastic about the trains, leaping on board several carriages with all the delight of a genuine train spotter. “That was really, really interesting”, he beamed — a very Conservative statement.

Just as interesting, though in a rather different way, was his encounter with a union official. The new Conservative party is union-friendly, so Mr Osborne had no difficulty warmly shaking the hand of the union convenor James McAveety. The Shadow Chancellor was told by the Shadow Scottish Secretary David Mundell that Mr McAveety was the brother of “Frank McAveety, the MSP”.

George’s bemused look indicated that Mr Osborne has never heard of “Frank McAveety the MSP” and therefore had no idea which side of the political divide he is on. Not wishing to be partisan he chose not to enquire and continued to take an interest in Mr McAveety, his 33 years of employment at the depot and the changes he had witnessed in the industry during that time.

“You lot privatised it,” quipped Mr McAveety, instantly telling George everything that he needed to know about Frank McAveety the Labour MSP.

Away from the depot, on the streets of Springburn, the voters talked of their despair over the level of unemployment, the bad housing, drug dependency and knife crime.

Mr Osborne had seen headlines in some Scottish papers talking of Tory toffs running down deprived areas of Scotland, so spoke with enthusiasm about all the “good things”, in fact the “fantastic” things, that were happening. The Tory message was a “big, positive uplifting one”, he said, so upbeat in fact that one wondered whether he was confusing Springburn with Palm Springs.

Back on safer territory, Mr Osborne accused Alex Salmond of “desperate attention-seeking” by urging Scots to vote for the SNP at the general election on what he said would be a chance to change the UK Government. “You can’t do that by voting SNP,” Mr Osborne warned.

He said that the big challenge was the scale of the national debt and accused Labour of merely talking about hard choices.

So is the man who believes he is ready to lead Britain’s economy up to making the kind of tough choices that Gordon Brown prevaricates over? An array of biscuits from healthy cereal bars to chocolate-coated Kit Kats was placed in front of the Shadow Chancellor — but could he, unlike the Prime Minister, choose his favourite? “No hesitation,” he said before demolishing a Kit Kat, thus demonstrating that he was at one with the healthy eating habits of the constituency.

Mr Osborne left Springburn to make a speech to the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, where no doubt he held out greater hopes of finding some more Tory voters.

It so happens, though, that there is a Conservative supporter employed in the Railcare depot who will give the party his vote in next month’s by-election.

But Mr Osborne failed to catch a glimpse of him “We bundled him through the back with the St George’s flag that he brings to work every day to wind everyone up. We weren’t going to let the Tories see him,” confided Frank’s brother. It’s the kind of manoeuvre that the Tories must grapple with if they are to track down more of those elusive supporters.

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