We could argue about the details of that for a long time, so for a start I would split it into at least two different things.
1) The actual realities of what approaches were plausible here in the UK.
2) Establishment assumptions, attitudes and impressions about this.
The former is where we could argue, with little supporting evidence since no sincere attempts were made to do that. Probably the closest we could get to a real world test would have been via how low a rate of infection was achieved by early summer 2020. Because given all the early errors at the start of the pandemic, and errors made later, that offers the best opportunity to consider just how close to a viable 'total suppression' strategy we could have managed if the will had been there at that time. Scottish authorities certainly recognised the merits of suppression enough that they included disingenuous lip-service to the principal back then. They pretended they were going for that, but they didnt actually do the thing necessary to hope to achieve it.
In terms of establishment attitudes I dont have much doubt that the whole 'global hub, trading nation' thing set the scene and limited establishment pandemic ambitions. Some days ago I dug out a SAGE behavioural group document that gives further glimpses into that establishment view, for example:
There are a bunch of other relevant quotes in the same document, including the authorities own perceptions about the nature of policing in different countries, but rather than quote these again now I will just link to my longer post about it.
Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion
