UK is one of the western country that did the least to shut down their economy and lifted all restrictions up very very quickly. That doesn’t seem to be as relevant to let’s say something else having a very long term impact called… Brexit.
As a British Citizen who lived in Finland throughout the pandemic, the UK's restrictions and shutdowns were several orders of magnitude higher, and longer lasting, than what I experienced there.
the netherlands were in lockdown until this february, by then most people in uk were not even taking about covid