BARROW'S MP has called on people to stop 'talking down' the town after a YouTuber described it as Britain's worst.

In a video viewed nearly 30,000 times, YouTuber The MacMaster highlighted empty shops in Barrow town centre saying: 'It's sad to see'.

The online video maker described a lack of footfall, likening it to the science-fiction film Invasion of the Bodysnatchers.

However, his comments have attracted the ire of Furness MP Simon Fell, who says the town's better days are ahead.

In the online video, The Macmasters, whose real name is Lee Davey, visits Barrow Market and Dalton Road, focusing on vacant and boarded-up shop units.

Summing up his experience of visiting the town in the video, he said: "I have to say this is probably the worst place I've visited so far in the UK.

"It's sad to see. What an awful place - I've never been to such a depressing town in my entire life.

"For me, there are no words for it ... it's just terrible."

The YouTuber referenced an article in The Sun which described Barrow as a 'drug-plagued town where the high street is dubbed "death row"'.

Responding to the video, Mr Fell pointed out positive developments on the horizon.

He said: "All too often, when a story appears on the news about Furness you see images of litter blowing down streets, of run-down terraces, and of broken windows.

"It is rarely mentioned that we are home to pioneering lighting firms, to one of the two remaining lead crystal manufacturers in the UK, that our people keep the world safe, that we are home to three SSSI sites, that Walney is the source of many of the UK’s oysters, or indeed that our people are brilliant.

"We see the negative so often that we sometimes believe it ourselves, despite evidence to the contrary all about us.

"Barrow and the wider Furness peninsula is on the up thanks to the huge investment the Government has put into the shipyard, the £220million I've helped secure through Team Barrow, and the massive amounts of investment that are transforming the town centre too.

"We need fewer people wallowing in talking us down, and more singing the praises of the changes underway."