Scones and speculation - one resort's grand ambitions

Tea room waitress Ruth says Southport needs more visitors to return

Southport’s genteel Lord Street is packed with tea rooms.

Yes, there are some coffee shops squeezed in too, but here on Merseyside’s coastal tip, it's the tea rooms that dominate.

So where better to test the political temperature of the region's most hotly contested constituency than at Westminster Tea Rooms?

"We’ve been so busy today, we haven’t had time to think about it all really," said Ray Blundell, when asked about the upcoming general election.

He opened this place 20 years ago with his wife. It’s all panelled wood, linen tablecloths and sugar cube tongs.

He said the name came from a Westminster clock he displayed over the mantelpiece.

"People just want a good, strong leader," Ray said when the talk turned to politics.

Like many in the resort who make a living from hospitality, Ray said he wanted more money invested into the town's tourist economy.

"We don’t get much politics chat over the silverware here," he said, "people come to relax!"

Tourism and hospitality is a key part of Southport's economy

Every Merseyside constituency in parliament is represented by Labour, apart from Southport.

This seaside town has never had a Labour MP.

That could change after the 4 July general election though, with the constituency being eyed up by Labour.

For many years Southport was a Liberal Democrat heartland but the Conservatives have held the seat since 2017.

Professor Stuart Wilks-Heeg, from the University of Liverpool's politics department, said Southport was the "last Merseyside seat" with any real chance of victory for the Tories.

He said it had been a "tussle for a long time between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats but now support for Labour has been creeping in".

Prof Wilks-Heeg said it had been a "three-way marginal" for many years, meaning the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats all thought they could win it.

Usually a popular attraction, Southport’s pier has been shut since 2022 for health and safety reasons

Boundary changes to the constituency mean that, for the first time, it will include bits of the former Ribble South constituency this year.

Further down Lord Street, the Nostalgia tea room also harks back to the days of silver service.

Dressed in a Victorian-style apron, waitress Ruth said one local issue - preserving a bit of Southport's history - would be on a lot of people's minds when they vote in July.

"The pier needs fixing," she said.

"People are going to be voting on that.

We want to get the tourists back in Southport and the pier is part of that."