You're an idiot. Welfare isn't socialism. You can have a welfare state without being a socialist country. I doubt you can be this wrong and have a degree from Oxford, but then again, perhaps I shouldn't be too surprised, given how many Marxists are in our "education" system these days. Socialism cannot "coexist" with a free market, by definition. They're mutually exclusive. Socialism is where the means of production are publicly owned, either by the State, the local community, or the workers themselves. A free market necessitates private ownership of property. It is an the inverse of socialism. Those countries are more Statist than the UK, certainly, but more "socialist"? No.