‘Fog in the Channel,continent isolated’: Britain as a model for EU social and economic policy?

A discourse on British ‘exceptionalism’ is currently developing according to which the UK's apparently ‘flexible’ economy should serve as a model for the rest of the EU. This is explored through two case studies concerning the transmission of regulatory practices from the continent to Britain (working time) and vice versa (takeover regulation). We suggest that a UK model of the firm constructed around shareholder value and untrammeled managerial prerogative is unlikely to have much resonance for other European systems, in which the term ‘flexibility’ has different connotations.