Wiganers split over Thursday's big vote - on the streets asking the electorate who they will be backing

Enthusiasm, indecision, apathy, anger. These contradictory emotions will all fuel the outcome of Wigan’s 2019 election, more than 100 years after Labour secured its grip on the town.

And even if the party walks it once again, those feelings will still not be far from the surface.

A safe seat in the party’s 20th century heartlands of the industrial north, Labour MPs have held the reins tightly since 1918.

Now, in this strangest of elections, it is a swirl of Brexit, the NHS, anti-semitism, social mobility and party leaders that preoccupies voters and non-voters alike on a rainy afternoon in the town centre.

For some, the choice is obvious. Without hesitation, Dave Neild says he will be backing Labour and is hoping for a change in government.

“I feel that people these days aren’t voting for the party but are voting for the leader,” says Dave, who was born in Wigan but now lives in Leeds.

“A lot of people don’t like Corbyn but I do. I think he’s refreshing and honest.

“He’s the politician we’ve been waiting for.”

In Standish, David Whittle will also be voting for Labour.

He also speaks highly of Lisa Nandy, Wigan’s incumbent MP, who has enjoyed comfortable majorities since 2010 but has found herself at odds with her party’s Brexit stance.

While David expects the Tories to get the majority they need, he says: “Nobody knows what’s going to happen with Brexit, and I think everyone is sick of it.

“All of these promises that the Tories are coming up with now, surely they could’ve done this in the time they’ve done in office?”

Standing at the bus stop on Standish’s high street, Pat Schoof is voting Labour too, but is predicting a hung parliament.

She feels that too much “disinformation” is being spread about Jeremy Corbyn, particularly regarding accusations he is anti-semitic.

“He is a man of principle, but he’s being maligned by the press,” she adds.

This is a town in which that old adage has been applied for decades: put up a donkey or a monkey in a red rosette and it would win.

But the Tories have also been quietly pushing to make gains in leave-voting, often disenfranchised territory such as this. At the start of the campaign their strategy of targeting northern “rugby league” towns was much-discussed by pundits – and while Lisa Nandy has a healthy majority, Boris Johnson will be hoping to make inroads in this heavily seat, despite her being one of the few Labour MPs to have vocally called for an EU exit to be secured.

Gill Metcalfe is waiting for the same 362 bus as Labour-voting Pat Schoof, but her views fall on the other side of the political divide to Pat’s. She is the kind of person the Conservatives are eyeing up. “It’s got to be Boris,” she says.

“He’s a clever man who knows what he’s doing, and he’s the only one that can get us out with Brexit.”

In Wigan town centre, Kenneth Just is going blue, too. He is unable to trust Labour’s leader, he says, making a vote for the Tories was a “very easy” choice. Unlike Pat Schoof, he sees the anti-semitism row in the Labour Party as a real issue.

“I can’t stand him, and I don’t trust him to run this country,” says Kenneth of the Labour leader.

But for many other residents, here as elsewhere, their minds won’t be made up until election day.

Allison Green, a self-described “floating voter”, says she doesn’t agree with all of the policies put forward by any of the parties.

Despite voting to remain in the EU in 2016, she is in two minds about wanting the government to “just get on with it”.

“I’m worried about the privatisation of the NHS, I don’t want that to happen,” she says.

And there are a fair few so disenfranchised with politics that they feel that none of the parties deserve their votes.

Several passers-by cringe at hearing the words “election” and “politics” and frequently offer retorts of “no chance” and “not for me”.

Debra Taylor will not be stepping into a polling station next week and thinks her vote will count for nothing.

“Politicians are all liars,” she says.

“I won’t be voting at all and even if I did, there will be idiots who will vote their own idiots in anyway.

“What’s the point? What really changes?”

Yet at the same time, for a great many voters in this election the underlying frustration with politics does not translate into apathy. Keith Woodall is angry at politicians too, but he won’t be staying at home. It’s just that neither of the two main parties has convinced him.

In his case it is security of the NHS, improved public transport and housing that is his focus – all major Labour campaigning issues in this election, in this Labour-held seat. But he won’t be backing them, or the Tories.

“You could put a monkey up in Wigan and they will vote for it as long as it’s Labour. I don’t trust any of them. We voted to come out and they’ve done their best to keep us in.”

He is genuinely worried about the economic prospects for young people in the country, he says – including his five grandchildren.

“My three children got help and they’ve all got houses, so they’re lucky,” he says

“A lot of people are stuck in a rut and they can’t get out, but when they do manage they then struggle to find a job or get onto the property market. It’s terrible.”

It is, perhaps, people like 17-year-old Michael Shaw that Keith is concerned about. The college student is a few months shy of being eligible to cast his first ever vote, but he still has something to say.

And it isn’t Jeremy Corbyn that would get his vote.

“I’d spoil by ballot paper if I could, none of them are good enough to vote for. They’re money-grabbers,” he says.

“Labour want to do all these grand things like offering free broadband and raising the minimum wage to £10.

“But where I work, my boss wouldn’t be able to afford to offer a higher minimum wage and I’d be out of a job. That doesn’t seem fair.”

He still feels they will retain their hold on Wigan, though.

“It’s a strong Labour town, isn’t it?” he says.

“A mate of mine at college says he’s voting for Labour because his parents voted for them.”

That may well be the case, but there are still signs the generational Labour loyalty built over a century may not be quite what it was.

The party here may not be as jittery as in next-door Leigh, but perhaps the enthusiasm for the red rosette is not quite what it was either.