To be honest not being in any way religious I find the notion that we designed our own version of a Middle Eastern derived religion to "stick two fingers up at the Pope and most of Europe" quite ridiculous. And frankly if you know your history you'll know the real reason why the Church of England was formed, and it was nothing to do with the above.
Aside from that, is there actually anything you can cite as making us unique from the rest of our neighbours?
I never said that the *reason* the CofE was founded was to stick two fingers up at the Pope. It was however the net result of what happened, and if you know your history you should be able to let me know how the religious schisms between Protestant and Catholic defined England and latterly the UK.
Britain is an island which fundamentally defines the outlook of the people who live there. It is inconceivable that Britain would be as it is were it connected to France by a 100 mile land border for example. Our avoidance of invasion and relative geographical security ensured our foreign policy for hundreds of years was simply to undermine whichever continental power we thought was getting too uppity, rather than work with allies properly.
Britain is also distinctly post-imperial and has not dealt with this in a way most former empires have, which gives way to a delusion of independence and grandeur. Today, that feeling that Britain can do anything it wants is misplaced; the nation lost its ability to act unilaterally over the course of two world wars (in neither of which we were invaded, unlike many of our European cousins). Britain has an unhealthy attachment to both world wars; frequently we overstate our contribution and we continue to allow WWII and its outcomes to unreasonably define our identity.
I could go on and on about various differences but the key ones to my mind are our geography and the whiff of two world wars which haven’t ever left the national psyche.
At the end of the day, nationhood and national psyche are esoteric things which exist and matter but which can’t always be pinned to a wall for everyone to inspect. It should be obvious that our national psyche is quite different to nations on the continent - after all, most of the people who voted in 2016 chose to leave the EU, in an election which was defined by nativism and identitarian politics. Explaining why is not so easy.