AN authoritative non politically-aligned website has highlighted Basildon as the 'bellwether' location symptomatic of problems besetting the UK.

The town has often been a focal point for UK politics because of the way its allegiances change and now a commentator on the Unherd website has once more delved into issues that affect the town and wider community.

An article by commentator Gavin Haynes is entitled 'The death of Basildon' and says the 'decaying' town has been ignored by both the Tories and Labour.

He says: "When it was built, in the 1950s, it was meant to be Somewhere.

"Now, in 2021, a war is raging for the soul of Basildon. 

"One that is the precise opposite of the planners' original vision. And one that will rely almost entirely upon that (since built) railway station. It's a project, in short, that would turn the town fully and finally into a suburb of Anywhere.

"And it's a war that places this long-time political bellwether at the heart of a bigger national narrative: about what we want from our sense of place, and what it means to have "community", at a point in the timeline when even our utopias seem shrunken."

Read the full article here.