Geraldine at Number 12 tells us very politely that she doesn’t know much about politics and so can’t really say how she’ll be voting on May 7 at the Scottish elections. The candidate though, gently keeps the conversation going, sensing that this smart woman knows more than she’s letting on.

An opening presents itself when Geraldine makes a throwaway remark about the buses. “I don’t really have a problem with the bus service,” she says. “You meet people on buses, and I see people using them for the company; not necessarily talking much, just being around other people.”

The candidate is Monica Lennon and we’re visiting a housing estate on Blantyre, in the Rutherglen and Cambuslang constituency which is seen as a barometer of what could happen across the rest of the Central Belt.

Ms Lennon is fighting for her political survival, having been an MSP for the Central Scotland region for the last 10 years, mainly on Labour’s front bench. She probably needs to win this seat outright, having finished fourth on Scottish Labour’s regional list.

She has a pleasing manner on the doorsteps and knows these people well. Later, she’ll show me the housing scheme in which she grew up as well as the schools and the church she attended as a child. In little more than an hour, she’s mapped out the residential history of three generations of her family. Here’s where Ms Lennon’s gran lived, with whom she used to spend her Saturday mornings. And just across the road is the working-man’s pub where she worked and brooked no nonsense. Just up the street is her uncle’s old house and those that belonged to the kindly neighbours who made her childhood safe and secure.

Clare Haughey places the blame at 'London' Labour's door (Image: PA)

There are many neighbourhoods like this in North and South Lanarkshire, too often derided and disdained by people who’ve never actually visited them. Your rarely hear Lanarkshire mentioned without the prefix “deepest, darkest”. It’s meant to convey the speaker’s airy worldliness and the sense that these streets are rough and hard and unforgiving (as if they’d know). Blantyre gets it tighter than most. Yet, the sense of community rooted in family and faith is very strong in these streets and you pledge to return.

Meanwhile, Geraldine at Number 12 is just getting started and gives us an eloquent snap-shot of her values and the issues she believes are important in this place. “Loneliness and social isolation affect a lot of people. You need to remember that a lot of elderly people are still confined to their houses after the Covid. We tend to underestimate how dangerous that time was for them........

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