Both the UK and EU have significantly stronger employment protection than the US, but they’d still do some damage.
Another part of the problem is conservatives still in this burn down the status quo when they’ve had so much power for so long that they are the status quo. But much of pre-Thatcher UK conservatives really were about keeping the world as it was. A good part of that keeping the far right boxed up, hence the response to Enoch Powell going far right. He torched his political career and became persona non grata.