"If you look around there's not a huge amount of people carrying shopping bags" says David Linden as we sit in a corporate coffee chain at The Forge in the heart of Glasgow's east end. "There must be less than any other shopping centre in the city area."

Poverty I guess. Deprivation. No disposable income for Clarks or River Island or Toys R Us. "It's really a place where locals come to socialise, for a coffee or meet friends and maybe pick up a few things", the SNP's young candidate for June's Westminster poll adds.

Well, bang goes that assumption. But then there are few bigger clichés in Scots politics than the profile of the Glasgow East constituency.

Since becoming the focus of UK-wide attention during the 2008 by-election, where a Labour defeat in its third safest seat in Scotland and one held by it since the 1940s marked the start of the party's steep decline, the story of the area has been told and retold.

A post-industrial case study of social deprivation and economic desperation, of scarred brownfield sites, low life expectancy, addiction, gangs and bigotry, Glasgow East is characterised to a point of poverty caricature.

Images of some younger residents on the doorstep of a semi-derelict inter-war tenement block became a visual shorthand for childhood deprivation and chronically poor housing, perpetuated 15 years on from their demolition.

Its swing from Labour to the SNP, the narrative goes, is the story of how one party has replaced another as the natural party of choice in west central Scotland.

Like all cliches such representations are not without their element of truth. The deprivation statistics don't lie. Nor the SNP's 10,000 margin of victory in 2015.

But the representation of the area is rarely even two dimensional. Glasgow East includes the very affluent ghetto of Mount Vernon and the sandstone semi-rural villas at Stepps.

Private developments of detached houses are springing up in the once notorious Easterhouse area. Scotland's first minister lives in the constituency, near the old Glasgow Zoo, and some of the city's best preserved Victorian tenements and bold and vibrant social housing low within its boundaries.

The 2014 Commonwealth Games has changed the physical landscape of the east end, which now hosts international sporting events aside from those of its most famous resident, Celtic FC.

An area of false starts, Glasgow East has a tangible sense of a constituency in flux. Politically it may be too.

Earlier this month it elected three Tories to the city council in areas where the party has had no representation for a century.

The Scottish party's rebrand from ideological Conservatism to almost a single issue movement for the Union is paying off in the most unlikely of places.

"Coming into this election on the back of the council election where there's been a small Tory resurgence and in a wider context where the Labour vote had collapsed I'm finding that those Labour but independence supporters who haven't made the journey to the SNP are finding this easier to come on board", says Linden.

"In 16 years of being involved in elections this is the first time the story has been about the SNP and the Tories. I'm very conscious that in places like Easterhouse people who are traditional Labour supporters are considering voting Tory for the first time.

"This isn't something I revel in. But people have been given a warning shot. There was chat they'd maybe do well nationally but three councillors in the east end has frightened some people who now see their neighbours vote Tory and hopefully are now galvanised to vote SNP. This is one of the constituencies with most to lose. And those people who are on our side will hopefully vote focused on the Tory push for a strong Brexit and further austerity."

An "unapologetic steady Eddie candidate", the 27-year-old father-of-one and local stalwart had been touted as the candidate in 2015 but did not stand for family reasons.

The SNP selected Natalie McGarry, who was last year charged over alleged fraud and lost the party whip. Colleagues say his previous decision has hung over Linden. For those on the doorsteps familiar with recent history Linden can pitch himself as the SNP's internal 'change candidate'.

On the doorsteps of Barrowfield, a classic example of the regeneration of the area and overshadowed by its iconic neighbour, Celtic Park, the enemy is a more familiar one than the Tories or the recent incumbent: voter apathy.

Turnout is traditionally low in Glasgow East. There's a heavy bout of voter fatigue too.

A local drag artist comes off the phone to assure Linden of his support, guarantees of their vote come from a handful of others who make the effort to engage on the street. But despite declaring the SNP as their party of choice the majority admit they are not regulars at the ballot box.

Outside the Barrowfield Centre, which provides training, education and childcare, a crowd of five 20-somethings, some in the strip of the local football team, admit they are unlikely to vote.

"I'm all for independence" says one. "And I don't understand people voting the Tories round here. But I don't understand politics. None of it changes anything."

Also presenting themselves as the voice of change is Labour's Kate Watson. Certainly a backroom A-lister within the party apparatus, a director for the pro-Union Better Together campaign who worked for Douglas Alexander during his time as shadow foreign secretary, the 36-year-old is nonetheless a first time candidate.

"I know I've a difficult job" she says. "I've an SNP majority of 10,000 to make inroads into. There is fatigue, turnout is usually lower than the national average but I'm try to inspire that enthusiasm to get people out.

"I've been going around people who are historically Labour and they want their chance to vote. And being a diverse area turnout is much higher in some parts than others."

A public opponent of Jeremy Corbyn's leadership, the former staffer for Bono's anti-poverty foundation said she accepted the mandate her party boss enjoys.

"I'd rather have one day of a Labour Government than these years of Tory or SNP governments" she says.

Watson also has connection with her opponent for the Unionist/Stop The SNP vote. As a schoolboy she gave the 20-year-old Tory Thomas Kerr his political start during the 2014 referendum campaign.

"Thomas Kerr worked for me in Better Together", she recalls. "Because none of the Labour members of the team would campaign with him as he was a Tory I asked my mum to.

"I know he's saying he's got a better chance than me but he got six per cent last time. I don't believe my opponent to the Tories. Thomas is out to make a bit of a name for himself."

Earlier this month he did just that. One of the first Tory shocks on May 5, he was a UK news story, a working class local youth elected in an area where hell and snowballs were synonymous with Conservative election hopes.

Political change in the area has been "as fast as its been dramatic" says the 20-year-old advertising and public relations college student. For an area in transition and continually misrepresented, Kerr believes he, not those with the political history in the east end or those who have usurped them, best symbolises the constituency.

"It annoys me that in all the analysis of the east end its always presented as poverty-stricken.

"There's not been a Tory elected in the area since 1917. I get that its significant. But there are a lot of aspirational working-class people wanting something else, something new. That's why I done well."