Following the majority of the majority on Thursday.

Seeing as it its the Sunday before a General Election I thought it was time to think about where to stick my 'X'.

I'll come clean right at the start of this piece, I haven't got a great vote/win ratio in General Elections. The first one I was qualified to vote in was in 1979 when the Conservatives got back the power for the first time since Edward Heath. I wasn't part of the Maggie Thatcher movement back then so got that one well and truly wrong.

I have witnessed nine General Elections since I turned 18, and i'm currently operating at a 33% strike rate, work that out how you like but in the first half of my life at least I was a follower of my upbringing rather than the policies of the day.

You have to understand my dad was from the mining community of Rossington near Doncaster, he moved to Leicestershire after he met my Mum and lived in a place called Whitwick, right in the heart of the Midland coal mining industry. In those days if you worked for a living it was more often than not connected to the pits somehow. The main town nearby was called Coalville, the name says it all really. Unfortunately these days all thats left of the coal mines is a museum at Snibston Colliery.

My dad was staunch Labour, for all I know he still is but I do know he no longer has the Daily Mirror delivered like we did back in the day. Not sure what that means, i'll be surprised if he's switched though.

My point is that when i was in my late teens and early twenties I had better things to do than worry about politics, I know that sounds rubbish now but at that time I couldn't care less about who was the Prime Minister. I tended to just follow what I knew, and that was that Labour represented the working class, and the majority of people in my circles thought the Tories just looked after the rich.

Well thankfully things have moved on and my views are usually reached by a more unbiased process these days and this year in particular will a more interesting election than in years gone past.

We have now lived in Southport for 18 months and after a few years of having Keith Vaz as our MP in Leicester we now find ourselves with a Liberal Democrat member of parliament. To make matters even more complicated the present long standing MP John Pugh is standing down so its a fresh start all round.

While in Leicester you really felt as though your voice couldn't be heard, Keith Vaz was so in control of things and with his 18,000 majority it just seemed a waste of time. It made me think of politics in a different way, do you vote nationally, locally or tactically. Even the Sunday papers couldn't get rid of Mr Vaz.

I have a feeling a lot of people just vote for the badge, whether that be Blue, Red, Gold or any other minority colour. It makes no difference to them who there local MP is and i'd like to bet that a fair few wouldn't even know the candidates name until having to scroll down the ballot paper to scribble their mark on election day. If your seat is a formality one way or another, like the Vaz ticket, I at least can now see how that would affect your enthusiasm and despite doing your bit you ain't going to change anything.

The Southport seat is quite interesting, it has been held by Lib-Dems for the last ten years. The majority at the last election was just a cup of tea, or 1,322 to be precise. We are number 15 on the Tory hit-list which is quite exciting. The gap had been dwindling in recent times and now the Tories are the bookies favourites to reclaim their seat, last won in 1992.

So lets have a look at it logically, we only have four realistic candidates and two of them Labour and UKIP appear to be out of the running in this neighbourhood. I think UKIP have had their chips, they made things interesting for a while but now we are out of Europe they have no argument as far as I can see. I have no idea why Labour doesn't do well here, before moving here I would have thought this Merseyside town would be a lot redder than it is. Maybe it dates back to the times where the well off came to Southport for their holidays and the so called riff-raff went up the road to Blackpool.

Anyway they are booked for a poor 3rd by all accounts, so that leaves us with two possible winners. The point is, if you are a Labour supporter do you stick to your guns and probably waste a vote or would you vote tactically to maybe keep out the Tories? I'm guessing some who would do anything to keep out Theresa May and if that meant a vote to the Lib Dems then so be it.

I have no definite political persuasion at the minute apart from I do believe the Lib Dems sacrificed their party when Nick Clegg did whatever was asked of him during the coalition, he got his 5 minutes of fame and for me it ended any credibility the party had. I predicted they would suffer at the next election and they did, they will not be getting my vote.

For what its worth I think Mr Pugh has got it about right, he left town just at the right time and you cant blame him, if I was a betting man my quid would be on a Conservative gain come Friday morning, its just a question of will that majority will be one more or one less?