A bit of history: Britain was a broken country and a failed Empire by the end of WWII. It was given preferential loans and grants by the US to rebuild. Britain, having an immense legacy of poverty and ignorance resulting from its class system, chose to spend this money on building the Welfare State. Other European countries spent the money on modernisation and industrialisation. 

The result? Britain did not modernise and instead enjoyed an improvement in living standards funded by American tax payers, but, built a Welfare State that its economy could not afford. Europe, on the other hand, boomed and achieved a higher standard of living through selling of goods and products. By the 1970s, Britain could not economically support its Welfare State, thus Thatcherism and the push for financialization with the City of London. Brexit is a fairy tale.