“Just get us out now, no deal, out, then we can sort it out after, I think,” says Dave Hill, a bus driver. “They keep dragging it on, and on, and on. Two years, isn’t it? Three?! Let’s just get it over and done with.

“I’m pissed off. I saw the French president last night saying it could be extended till December. It’s a joke … Nige, Nigel Farage will sort them out.”

A deep sense of frustration over the further lengthy delay facing Brexit swirls around the high street in Rayleigh, Essex – at the heart of hard-Brexiter Mark Francois’ constituency where about two-thirds of people voted to leave.

As Theresa May headed to Brussels once again on Wednesday, many locals said they are tired of waiting and expressing a deep distrust of politicians.

“It’s ridiculous really, we made a decision however long ago and we’re still no further than where we were,” says Emily Sach, an assistant psychologist who voted leave. “We just need to act on it. It feels like we’re not going to leave. I think [the EU] wants something, so we’ve had to find a way to stay. It doesn’t really feel like democracy. Everyone round here’s fed up.”

On Tuesday, Tory MP Francois warned the EU that it will be facing “perfidious Albion on speed” – understood to mean the UK causing extreme mischief in the pursuit of self-interest – if it attempted to “hold us in against our will”.

As Leave-voter Kim Humphrey waits for a bus with her granddaughter, she explains how she has no faith in the prime minister securing a deal and that the uncertainty has led her to have second thoughts over the way she voted. “We voted, but we’re still in it,” she says, exasperatedly. “Now I don’t know if it’s the right thing to come out, or if it would be better to stay in.”

Mark Taylor. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

On whether the EU has acted treacherously, as Francois suggested, to keep the UK in the bloc against its will, she says: “No, I don’t think so, it’s down to her, she’s the person making the deal.”

Further up the road, by the off-licence, Fernando Sallerman-Hart, who runs a news site, believes none of the country’s “highly-paid” politicians represent normal people, and that they are “dragging it out” because they have never intended to “bring anyone out of the EU dictatorship”.

Another local captures the palpable sense that all faith has been lost in the political process. “What trust there was after that expenses con, I think it’s worse now,” says Mark Taylor, who is selling bedding at the market. “What the ordinary, working person thinks is ‘If I asked you to do something, do it!’, isn’t that why we elect people?

“MPs have misunderstood why they were elected. It was to serve the people, but what they’re doing is serving their own agenda.”

Harry Bransgrove. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

Anger is also directed towards the Conservative government, the party who people in the area have voted in for generations. “The ministers are just useless and the trouble is that the prime minister’s not tough enough to take control so we’re left with anarchy,” says Harry Bransgrove, formerly a chartered accountant. “I’m fed up, it just goes on and on and on without going anywhere.

“I’m not really interested in it now to be honest because by the time it gets sorted out, as a 90-year old, I don’t know how much time I have left. It’s a young person’s game and what they’re going to do I don’t know.”

Not everyone is frustrated by the wait, though. “I didn’t want to leave the EU in the first place, so I’m fine with us staying,” says Laura Lewse, a mental health support worker who lives outside of Rayleigh. “I couldn’t care less about the delays.”