When I first came to the town, the railway works had only just closed.

Many residents had spent most of their lives working there. The town was still recognisably a railway town. How rapidly all that changed.

The site of the works now houses a museum to the railway age, a designer retail outlet and the headquarters of the National Trust. Most people now work in the service sector.

As the town has grown and grown over the last two decades, it’s begun to look very different from the industrial town it once was. But important things remain from the railway era.

Swindon has always faced outwards to the world. Its creation as a modern town by Brunel reflected its central position linking the two great city-ports of London and Bristol, and today it remains a home to great global businesses.

Its location, at the heart of a network of rail and motorways and near to Heathrow, remains a powerful attraction to the many services, companies and organisations who make their home here.

It’s always been a town of migrants. Its economic success has always been a magnet for people from all over the United Kingdom and the rest of the world – and the big post-war London overspill developments also helped create a town where less than 10 per cent of residents were born in it.

That mobility helps account for the fact that the workforce in the town has always been unusually flexible and skilled. Employer after employer I’ve spoken to over the years has explained their loyalty to the town in terms of the quality of workforce they find here.

And crucially, Swindon has always shown a remarkable capacity to reinvent itself, starting with its rapid transformation from a quiet Wiltshire market town into a great railways works within a few years, and then with the decline of the railways works into a modern manufacturing and service industry centre. It’s hard to think of anywhere else in the United Kingdom that has ridden the tides of economic change so successfully as Swindon.

This success did not come about by itself. It was fortunate that Brunel, one of the greatest engineers and entrepreneurs in history, chose Swindon. And in the difficult post war years, Swindon came to owe a huge debt to those visionary councillors who had the foresight to plan for the railway works' decline, and, of course to the legendary town clerk, Murray John.

Soon after I came to Swindon, I remember being told that he had single-handedly changed the route of the M4. He had persuaded the government of Harold Wilson, the story went, that the new motorway had to pass nearer to Swindon to stop the town's decline in the wake of the railways works running down and this accounts for the definite kink in the route. Perhaps the story is apocryphal but it still represents a fundamental truth about the town's determination not to get left behind by change.

The nature of this success has rendered the town particularly sensitive to changes in the economic climate. It is particularly open to the world economy so when that prospers as it did throughout the last fifteen years the town does particularly well. But when it turns down, as it has in the global financial crisis, then Swindon is hurt particularly badly, so unemployment in the town, for example, went up faster than almost anywhere else in the United Kingdom last year.

And these challenges are going to become more acute in the years ahead. The world economy is going to become increasingly integrated and even more volatile and competitive. For those that can succeed in this new world, the rewards could be immense, but the risks for those that don’t adapt are considerable.

At a local level, there are likely to be continuing challenges from the disparities of wealth in the town, which mirror those in the country as a whole.

In the midst of prosperity, there remains real deprivation and such inequality produces an unfair and unhealthy society.

This represents a continuing challenge to local and national government.

Investment in public services and tax credits helps. But council and government alike need to become even more sensitive to the needs of all those they serve.

In the past five years, I have spent significant amounts of time trying to remind Swindon Borough Council, not always successfully, that they must not ignore the needs of communities in Penhill and Pinehurst.

In these circumstances, it’s more important than ever that Swindon develops an exciting strategic vision for this century to match that of the last one.

One of the sadnesses I feel about leaving politics now is that I do so having failed to persuade Swindon Borough Council to adopt such a vision.

Since 2004, I have been begging the council to develop a green vision for the town. I'm still waiting for it.

If we do not tackle global warming, and now, there will be incalculable consequences for our world.

And this is not just a matter for national governments and international agreements. We can all make a contribution and Swindon should be in the forefront.

The greenest cities will be the ones most attractive for people to live and work in. Reykjavik is running buses on hydrogen. Woking Council has shown the way on energy conservation. If Woking can do it, why not Swindon?

And then there’s the town centre. I secured the start-up funding for the New Swindon Company.

Swindon was not an obvious candidate for such an Urban Regeneration Company but I convinced ministers that the future of the town and its region depended on an attractive town centre to attract companies and people to the town.

What was needed, in my view, was not just an improvement on what already existed but something so exciting it would attract visitors from across the world.

We’re in competition not just with Bristol and Reading but with towns across Europe, all of whom are producing exciting projects for urban regeneration.

Instead we got a plan that is definitely an improvement but not nearly as good as it could have been. And I am saddened that Swindon Borough Council have persistently ignored all my attempts to make it better.

I held a meeting in the House of Commons five years ago, for example, with representatives of some of Britain’s leading cultural institutions, with the leader of Swindon Council, to discuss visions of how the town could develop.

Exciting and imaginative suggestions were made, with proposals for involving the people of Swindon in making progress.

I offered my help to the council in taking these ideas forward. I never received a substantive reply.

Whether or not the ideas would have turned out to be practicable, a truly ambitious council would have, at least, explored the visions of some of the Britain’s leading experts in their field.

The public equivocation and evasions about future development reflect a lack of confidence and vision in the council that will damage the town in the long run.

It does not match up to the boldness of Brunel and their 20th century predecessors in the council. While I still hope that will change, it is one of the regrets I have about my time as an MP that I was not to help bring that about. Nevertheless, Swindon’s history has always been of resilient and successful responses to the challenges of change and the strength of its people make me confident that history will be continued as the town moves on through the 21st century.