Geoffrey Chesters was supposed to be helping at his daughter’s shop in Crewe on Wednesday, but he was engrossed in a book about money-making schemes, bought for £1 at Nantwich market. He’d reached a chapter entitled “How to become even richer when everyone else goes to the wall”, and was learning how to survive financial apocalypse.

“Look at this,” he said, pointing to a paragraph about negotiating a banking collapse. “This is what’s coming.” He’d been stockpiling tins for months. A no-deal Brexit was going to make everyone poorer, he said. But it was worth it, if it meant the UK got control over immigration. That’s why he voted to leave the European Union: “We’ve got too many of them coming over here and I want it to stop.”

Just over 60% of people in the Cheshire constituency of Crewe and Nantwich voted for Brexit. Laura Smith, who won the seat for Labour in 2017 with a majority of just 48 over the Conservatives, was not among them.

But when she campaigned in the snap election she made it clear she respected the referendum result, and on Tuesday night was one of 14 Labour MPs to defy the party whip and vote against Yvette Cooper’s delaying amendment. “It is clear from the feedback I’ve had from constituents in recent days that many people saw this amendment as nothing more than an attempt to delay and frustrate Brexit,” she said.

A picture of Westminster in a jeweller’s shop in Crewe. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

Cooper’s attempt to prevent a no-deal Brexit and postpone the UK’s departure from the EU was defeated by just 23 votes. Chesters, a life-long Labour man, was pleased Smith played her role in thwarting the amendment: “She’s for the people and so am I.”

The 73-year-old former builder and engineer said he had been lied to by the leave campaign. “They didn’t tell us the true facts. They kept us in the dark like mushrooms and fed us bullshit,” he said. “We voted because of immigration and we didn’t realise how poor we would be. It will be terrible but I still want it, because of immigration.”

A Polish supermarket in Crewe. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

It is something Iraqi-Kurds in the barbers up the road have heard a lot since the referendum. “I was in a nightclub and these two English lads were pretty drunk,” said one barber, who asked not to be named. “They were saying: ‘We’re coming out of Europe and then we can get rid of you.’ I told them: ‘I’m a British citizen.’ I got citizenship 20 years ago after fleeing from Iraq. But they said: ‘It doesn’t matter, you’ve got dark skin.’ My 11-year-old daughter has heard this too.”

According to the 2011 census, 16.8% of the population in the ward of Crewe Central is foreign born, with 11.4% from eastern Europe, Malta and Cyprus.

Shermin Hassan, a 28-year-old aspiring actor of Cypriot heritage, only moved to Crewe a month ago, to be with her partner, Kyan Adams. Originally from Tottenham in London, she voted remain but moving north had “opened her eyes”. She said she was now much more sympathetic to the idea of leaving the EU.

Living in multicultural north London, it was hard understand why anyone would have a problem with immigration, she said: “But coming here has broadened my mind … there aren’t as many jobs and many of them are on lower pay.” Adams works in a lingerie warehouse alongside Romanians and Poles: “I used to work at Tesco but they could only guarantee me 12 hours a week. The rest was zero hours.”

Shermin Hassan (right) and Kyan Adams. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

In a nearby jewellers, 59-year-old remainer, Margaret (who didn’t want to give her surname), was in dismay at the prospect of a no-deal Brexit. A life-long Labour voter – “of course I’m Labour, I’m working class” – she was disappointed in Smith, and wants the government to have more time to negotiate a better deal. “It’s the people who are already on the breadline who are going to be the ones hurt most. People in government who want no deal don’t know that side of life … I understand respecting the referendum, but if it is detrimental to the people who haven’t got much, how can that be right?”

However, Smith was unrepentant: “I have made it clear that I am totally against leaving the EU without a deal but the only way to avoid that is to reach a deal. That is what I believe parliament should be striving for and this amendment would have allowed MPs to avoid focussing on this task.”