“Decent people don’t go out on a Saturday night in Crewe any more,” one self-employed man told me. “They either can’t afford it or they’re frightened to walk the streets because of the crime and drunkenness.”

Another voter complained: “Labour say they’re tackling anti-social behaviour but nothing ever changes here.”
Others were uncomfortable about the impact of immigration. One local landmark, the Duke of Bridgewater Inn, has been transformed into a Polish pub.

“People here aren’t anti-immigrant, they’re just fed up with seeing them come here and getting benefits. We’re fed up with being treated like second-class citizens in our own country,” said one local.

And the growing tax burden is bitterly resented. Lifelong Labour voters have no qualms about switching straight to the Conservatives as a result. “I used to hate the Tories but at least they were honest about what you had to pay. This lot rip us off with all these stealth taxes that just keep going up,” said one.

Labour’s response has been to run a stunningly puerile campaign. Activists dressed as top-hatted toffs or scruffy hoodies attempt to turn Conservative events into chaos. Leaflets seek to smear Tory candidate Edward Timpson as a Lord Snooty caricature.

Labour’s candidate Tamsin Dunwoody – daughter of the veteran Labour backbencher Gwyneth Dunwoody, whose death led to the poll – refuses to be drawn on her party’s miserable record.

“I’m only interested in standing up for the people of Crewe and Nantwich,” says the candidate, a tough cookie who seems proud of being a chip off the old battleaxe. Her slogan is “one of us”, harking back to the “us and them” class war nonsense of the Eighties.

In contrast to Mr Brown’s strategy of keeping clear, the Tories are pouring resources into the by-election.

Twenty-five Conservative MPs were tramping the streets on the day I visited. David Cameron makes his third visit today and plans another next week.

His reception has been warm in a constituency that has been solid Labour heartland for decades. Mr Brown would be unlikely to get a friendly welcome. So his solution – as always with this tax-and-spend addict – is to hurl taxpayers’ money at the problem.

In a week’s time we will know whether his generosity with our money has paid off in the by-election. Labour MPs and ministers desperately hope so. In the Commons yesterday a few even allowed themselves to appear relaxed as the 10p tax rebellion vanished.

But the smirks felt dangerously misplaced; the fiercely independent voters of Crewe and Nantwich seem determined to vent their frustrations on Labour at the ballot box next Thursday. Just a fortnight ago their local council turned blue overnight and one swift U-turn on tax is unlikely to change matters.

More importantly, the Brown bribery strategy already looks doomed in the long run in towards the next general election, almost certainly in 2010. The benefit of this week’s bribery will have worn off by the time the bill for it arrives at the next Budget.

And despite the latest costly shopping list of gimmickry unveiled in the draft Queen’s Speech yesterday, the Govern-ment cannot borrow indefi-nitely to slip out of every self-inflicted embarrassment. The Treasury is simply running out of cash.

As the anger in Crewe and Nantwich shows, voters have seen through Mr Brown’s tired stealth tax-and-spend trickery. They are clamouring for genuine, lasting tax cuts based on slashing Government waste, not a quick bung that will only hike bills in the future.

Mr Brown had better get used to electoral disappointment, whatever the by-election result. With his box of bribes almost empty, he has little else to save him when the rest of the country gets a chance to speak at a general election.