Abandoned homes in any great number would be a real surprise. I think those videos are likely quite carefully staged.

I left the UK about four years ago but AFAICT the picture of housing over there hasn’t changed a lot - it keeps going up in price and there’s a shortage.

There are economic problems at the moment, and service provision problems in particular with the NHS. A decade of post 08 GFC austerity stripped public services and hammered government investment, which turned out to have not been that smart. Then Brexit hammered trade.

Closed-up shops have been a minor trend for a while - small shops have been failing for years due to high taxes, insane rents and being thoroughly outcompeted by the internet. Many old-fashioned high streets have become little more than strips of coffee shops and charity retailers, the former because apparently there is no limit to the appetite for coffee, the latter because they often get tax and rent concessions.

It has always been true that London is like its own country, with transport, employment and investment there dwarfing everywhere else, and tackling this to spread out the prosperity more widely has been a consistent failure of British politics for as long as I remember.

Beyond London there’s the ever expanding, fairly wealthy belt of dormitory-towns, and then there’s the rest of the country, which in my last visit did just feel run down.

I’ve been to Detroit, and I’ve read about the decline there. I don’t think the UK is anywhere near that. But it is languishing in a prolonged economic malaise.