Great Britain is not an Island

[Jolt]

How many western European countries can claim to having changed from direct rule by a monarch to rule by a democratic parliament without blood being shed?

...The United Provinces? England had a Civil War concerning that.

As others have mentioned, it was Britain which led the fight against the slave trade, banning it before any of the other major powers. A rather courageous step and one to be proud of.

Britain has so much to be proud of and yet she's chucking it away.

Britain is English, Scottish, Welsh, and British, and that's heads above being European.

Portugal was the first major colonial empire that banned Slave Trade, thus before England.

I think Britain is European by the simple fact that it has always been inside the European Politics.
All it's wars were influenced by European Politics, and it's fate has always been closely tied with the whole of Europe.