"The UK is not Europe"

Why do Brits think they’re not part of Europe?

A question I get asked all the time is:

“Why do Brits think they’re not part of Europe?”

It’s a fair question. One which I will attempt to answer here.

To most Europeans, the answer feels obvious: You’re on the map. You’re just across the Channel. Of course you’re part of Europe.

But geographic proximity doesn’t dictate identity. Identity isn’t about logic. It’s emotional.

The truth is, the UK has never really seen itself as European.

For simplicities sake I will talk about the UK as a whole, although I am aware that Scotland feels closer to Europe than Wales or England does.

Even before Brexit, people spoke about “Europe and the UK” like they were two separate things.

Nobody says “Europe and France,” or “Europe and Spain,” or “Europe and Germany”

But “Europe and the UK”? That rolls off the tongue like it’s always been the case.

When I moved to Germany over a decade ago, I was constantly being told “of course you’re European.” Not as a gesture of inclusion. Just as a matter of fact.

Brexit was a huge wakeup call. It forced Europeans to actually take this idea seriously and not just shrug it off as “British exceptionalism. ”

To Germans especially, Britain is, or at least was, just another country on the continent. Like Denmark. Like Portugal. Just another star in the constellation.

But Brexit really forced many to rethink this whole relationship. I had many situations where people were personally upset with me. They felt hurt, as if this was some kind of divorce they never wanted.

But I am not your average Brit. I have lived outside of the UK for almost 20 years now. Because of that my identity has shifted. I feel emotionally connected to Europe as well as the UK but this is very much the exception. Few people feel this way.

Ask an average Brit on the streets of any British town if they feel European and you’ll usually get a pause. A vague shrug. Or an outright no.

According to the latest Eurobarometer survey, 64% of people in the UK deny feeling ‘European’ in any way, a figure notably higher than in other EU countries, such as Germany (25%) and France (36%) .

So why is this? Well most people don’t really know. They can’t fully articulate it and probably would not agree with my take but I think there are 6 main things that have contributed to this over time.

These are:

1. Geograpahy.

2. The empire.

3. Revolution.

4. Legal DNA.

5. The Monarchy

6. The Language

1. Geographic proximity does not define identity

I’m sure you’ve heard of the island mentality before. the UK is physically separated from Europe but it’s not just the physical separation, it’s what that separation allowed the UK to become. The English Channel has played a large role in shaping the UK’s narrative about itself.

While Europe rose and fell through shifting borders and land wars, Britain had the luxury of distance. Britain didn’t need to entangle itself unless it chose to.

That created a national psychology of watching from the shore, of stepping in only when it suited us. The English Channel isn’t just a body of water—it’s a psychological moat.

A buffer zone between “us” and “them.”

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2. The Empire Gave Britain a Global Identity

While European countries were rebuilding themselves after war, Britain still saw itself as managing the world.

Even though politically and economically Britain has lost relevance, culturally it’s still complicated.

Historically our focus has been outward, not inward. Our alliances stretched to India, Canada, Australia, not Brussels or Berlin.

Even today, many Brits still feel more at home talking to someone from Sydney or Toronto than they do to someone from Vienna or Barcelona.

It’s not just the language. It’s the sensibility. The Commonwealth gave Britain a sense of being global, not continental.

You can still feel it in the national psyche, that lingering belief that Britain is more than just a European country. It’s something else. Something bigger.

And I know that many people mock the British for this. There’s a certain sense of scharden freude. But even if that belief is no longer true in reality, it’s still very much true emotionally.

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3. The British Never Had a Revolution

This is something Europeans do not appreciate. Britain never had a revolution. We never had our Bastille moment. No guillotines. No radical upheaval of church or monarchy.

Most European countries had to reinvent themselves… through force. But Britain evolved. Slowly. Reluctantly. Reforms instead of revolutions. Adjustments instead of resets.

We kept the monarchy. We kept our class system. We kept our continuity.

There’s a deep conservatism at the heart of British identity, not necessarily politically, but psychologically.

The British see themselves as the steady hand while Europe is full of fevered ideologies. Britain watched the continent swing from monarchy to fascism to communism and back again.

And through it all, Britain stayed relatively stable. We tend to forget that these radical ideological shifts happened recently. We are not talking about some distant past.

You can still feel the effects of this. Visit former East Germany. It’s difficult to describe but it just “feels” different. You notice it immediately. Even walking through Berlin somehow the mood changes when passing through former East German areas.

The cultural remnants of those ideologies still hangs in the air.

Britain wore that stability and sense of “looking on from the side lines” like a badge of honour. And to a certain extent still does.

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4. The Legal DNA Is Different

The British legal system is fundamentally different from that of most European countries.

Britain runs on common law. (Scotland uses a mix of the two). Europe runs on civil law.

That difference is more than technical, it’s philosophical. Common law is bottom-up. It builds on precedent, case by case. It trusts the wisdom of history and the judgement of courts.

Civil law is top-down. It’s codified. Structured. Built from theory. This shapes how we think about authority, fairness and rules.

In Britain, the law is lived and interpreted. In much of Europe, it’s written and obeyed.

That’s why British people instinctively bristle at bureaucracy, at rigid systems, and at rule by regulation.

It’s not arrogance, it’s the deep structure of how the British think about freedom.

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5. The Monarchy Still Matters

Britain is one of the few European countries that still a monarchy. Not just in form, but in sentiment.

In France, the revolution wiped the slate clean. In Germany, the Kaiser is long gone. But in Britain, the crown still sits at the centre of national life, even if it’s mostly symbolic.

The monarchy connects the present to a romanticised past. And in a strange way, it reinforces our separateness.

The British don’t just feel different, they are told that they’re different. By tradition. By ceremony. By the very structure of their state.

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6. The Language Creates a Cultural Barrier

English isn’t just a language, it’s an empire of its own.

For more on this read my previous letter here.

Obviously, it allowed Britain to export its culture, but much more importantly it served to insulate itself from others. We don’t dub. We don’t consume foreign media at all.

Millions in Europe grow up watching British and American TV. But in the UK, you’d struggle to find a teenager who’s seen a German film or a French series.

Language is more than vocabulary, it’s a worldview. And as I mentioned in my previous letter on “the language revolution that everyone’s ignorin”g it is far more powerful than physical weapons.

The language is the vessel for the world view.

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The Real Divide

So when Europeans ask, “Why don’t Brits feel European?”, the answer is simple but not shallow:

Because Britain has spent centuries constructing a story in which the British are not European.

Not just apart, but different.

More stable. More global. More measured.

Less ideological. Less revolutionary. Less…continental.

That story may not be accurate anymore. But national identity is not based on accuracy. It’s based on emotion. And the emotion Britain feels toward Europe is, at best, ambivalent.

I still think that most Europeans just don’t understand this, and maybe are even unwilling to understand this…even after reading this you might just be shaking your head in disbelief.

This is not my personal point of view. I love Europe. I love the rich density of culture and language that this continent provides.

I love Germany and I think that the British have a lot in common with the Germans and perhaps to some degree the dutch but most brits would not agree with this….or even if they did would not like to admit this.

I think a fundamental mistake that many of us make is to think that other people think like us. They value the same things, they see the world in the same way. But the older I get, the more I put out into the world the more I realise that this is not the case.

Most people are not looking for new insights, new world views or new ways of thinking. They are looking for new ways to confirm their thoughts, reject alternative views and entrench their preexisting identity.

Thanks for reading.

Enjoy the rest of your day.