IT TAKES about 15 minutes to walk from Glasgow's Merchant City, where you can buy £90 thongs from Agent Provocateur and £1000 suits from Emporio Armani, to the outskirts of Glasgow East; from the avenues built on the bounty of Victorian entrepreneurialism to what looks like a shanty town.

Once upon a time the Gallowgate was throbbing with life. But on a drizzly July morning, with the start of the Glasgow Fair just a few days away, it looks as if it has been kicked in the teeth and left for dead. It's early, but a few decrepit bars are already open.

Outside MacKinnon's, an elderly man is enjoying a fag, looking out on to what was once a thriving bric-a-brac market that is now covered in weeds and graffiti. "We buy rubbish - we sell antiques," promises one slogan. Many others are devoted to the cause of Partick Thistle, of whom the former owner of the market was apparently a supporter. "Nae wonder he ended up hingin' himself," says my informant, adding, as a smile blossoms on his face: "That's what I heard onywey."

As you travel east and further along the Gallowgate, you are confronted with a past long thought to have been buried. Bakers sell two bars of tablet for a tempting £1.20. In Libby Libby's, the legendary painting and decorating shop, Celtic wallpaper is on offer at £2 a roll. On the other side of the street is "Glasgow's Oldest Chippie" offering spam fritters ("old-fashioned favourite - must carry out"), deep-fried Mars bars and a three-course lunch including mince and tatties for a mighty £5.99. In Timland, all things Celtic are sold, including women's underwear with strategically placed no entry logos and the words "No Huns".

This is, of course, Celtic territory, where in bars such as Baird's the aforementioned Huns are not welcome. Using its toilets, my daughter, who is accompanying me, encounters a woman, dressed head to toe in leather, who asks: "Got any hairspray? Or deodorant?"

On a fence opposite the Barrowlands, someone has plonked an unfinished takeaway, the smell of which is rancid. Bins overflow and posters peel on corrugated iron, including one advertising the appearance of Derek Warfield of The Wolftones, "The Patriotic Spirit of Irish Music".

There is nothing, however, to suggest there is a looming by-election that could alter the face of British politics. There are no posters, no cars carrying party officials shouting slogans through megaphones, no buzz, no sign of William Hague - the Tory de jour - who has opted instead for Tesco in Shettleston, where he is trying valiantly to turn the price of potatoes into an election issue.

New flats and houses are being built, though, and on the site of the old meat market and abattoir there is a prize-winning regeneration project. Was this, one wonders, where Mat Craig - the hero of Archie Hind's great novel, The Dear Green Place - came to work as a slaughterman? At Sword Street, at last, there are posters for Margaret Curran, Labour's fifth-choice candidate, "Standing Up for the East End", and John Mason, the SNP's bachelor Baptist, who has said he'd ignore a No vote in a referendum on independence.

INCH by inch, day by day, point by point, the gap is closing. A week ago, and 11 days before the voters of Glasgow East were due to go to the polls, Labour held a lead of 14% over the SNP, who need a 22% swing if they are to wipe out a majority of over 13,500. Some commentators, however, expressed a note of scepticism, pointing out that of the 516 people polled, 131 said they would vote Labour, while 124 opted for the SNP.

If this analysis is correct then this by-election, which could yet prove cataclysmic for Gordon Brown's troubled premiership, is too close to call. The bookies appear to agree, installing Labour as firm favourites at 4/9 but with the SNP champing at the bit at 13/8. Insanely hopeful punters may be more interested in the LibDems at 100-1 or the Conservatives at 500-1.

Certainly the first minister, Alex Salmond, who has visited the constituency so often he could soon qualify for a vote, remains bullish, confidently predicting victory. For Salmond, elections are meat and two veg. He personally has never lost one since he was a student at St Andrews. That still rankles. Nor is he any less forgiving when it comes to his party. Labour's lead, he insists, can be overtaken.

"We are well aware of the extent of the majority," he said on Thursday, when he was torn between campaigning and watching the first round of the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale, "but I think we can get there. I am absolutely convinced we can do this."

If positive thinking could win elections the SNP would be a shoo-in. But it will take more than that to wrestle Glasgow East from Labour's clutches. This blighted part of Glasgow has long been a Labour fiefdom, though the constituency's new boundaries were only drawn three years ago.

As has been insensitively and offensively pointed out ad nauseam by day-trippers from the London media sent north to sneer at people who have few means of redress, poverty here is endemic. This is at the root of most if not all of Glasgow East's problems, which range from the early deaths of males to high rates of unemployment and sickness, alcohol abuse, drug addiction and the gamut of anti-social behaviour. Here, even if children leave school literate and numerate, they have much less chance of going on to higher education than their peers virtually anywhere else in the country. They are victims by virtue of where they've been born and brought up.

While that sounds bad - and no-one would deny that it is - comparisons with Baghdad and Beirut by journalists who rarely venture beyond Maida Vale serve only to create an impression that makes regeneration only harder. The truth, of course, is more complex and much less easy to articulate. Statistics may not lie but they cannot tell the whole story.

A MAN carrying two shopping bags says "hello", which is not something you hear volunteered very often in the Merchant City. Outside the art deco Bellgrove Hotel, which now lies empty, three men nod. Each has a can in his hand. One has an eye that won't open.

Opposite is the East End Healthy Living Centre. Although it is the middle of the school holidays the two football pitches are empty and there's no-one on the running track. Soon the east end is to be inundated with more of such facilities, as the recipient of Commonwealth Games largesse. Jobs - the figure 21,000 has been mentioned - will be created but what of the long term? A few kids are larking around in the playground and the summer programme offers various classes, including creative writing ("think you can be the next JK Rowling?"), gardening ("a relaxed and therapeutic morning trying different gardening techniques") and stopping smoking. Further on there is a block of houses, about half of which are boarded up. Where, when the adjacent St Mungo's Academy is closed, do the clientele for the Healthy Living Centre come from?

And so it goes. The further one gets from the city centre the more Glasgow East looks like what it is, a constituency without a heart. Further out is Easterhouse, where 50,000 or so people live. Would you want to? My daughter says a friend of hers worked at the National Theatre, whose headquarters are there. She hated it. Once you were there, she said, there was nothing to do, nowhere to eat or drink or socialise. Nor could you drive or cycle, because it was inevitable that your car or bike would be stolen or vandalised. At least she was able to escape. That is not an option available to countless others.

To the southwest lies Celtic Park, which is also in the constituency, where the Liberal Democrats had chosen to take their candidate, Ian Robertson, for a photo opportunity and to launch a petition to save Parkhead Fire Station.

He would have been better basing himself at the Forge Market in Shettleston, the largest enclosed market of its kind in Scotland. It was heaving and no wonder. Here, you can buy almost anything, from tattoos to predictions about your future from a member of the Romany royal family, enough meat to feed a family of four for a week for £19.99 and £2500 holidays in Florida.

"Awfie weather we're having," remarks a woman in a cafe. "You've got an angel face," says a pensioner to my daughter. "Dinnae ruin it wi' a frown." After which he proposes marriage to a woman in a wheelchair who'd had her legs amputated beneath the knees.

Outside, only three parties are campaigning in the rain; Labour, the Scottish Socialist Party and Solidarity. In all, nine candidates are contesting this by-election. There are potentially 69,000 voters in Glasgow East, of whom only about a third are expected to exercise their right to vote. A lot depends on who they decide to go for. But whatever they do there is more apathy than enthusiasm. And who can blame them? By Friday morning the circus will have packed up and moved elsewhere.