> But of course EU is fundamentally different in a way that the politicians need to please the electorate,
Are we talking about the same EU? In my experience EU is used as a scapegoat by national government, to push through unpopular legislation that they want "because it's an EU requirement". No one checks if they actually supported that same policy when it was actually decided in the EU - it would have been a ton of work too, since how decisions are actually made isn't exactly transparent.
I think it's by design, EU is in large part made to take the blame for domestically unpopular policy. So it's not a surprise that UK conservatives eventually pivoted from profitably using the EU as a scapegoat, to sacrificing that same ghost.
Are we talking about the same EU? In my experience EU is used as a scapegoat by national government, to push through unpopular legislation that they want "because it's an EU requirement". No one checks if they actually supported that same policy when it was actually decided in the EU - it would have been a ton of work too, since how decisions are actually made isn't exactly transparent. I think it's by design, EU is in large part made to take the blame for domestically unpopular policy. So it's not a surprise that UK conservatives eventually pivoted from profitably using the EU as a scapegoat, to sacrificing that same ghost.