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Although dental coverage on the NHS sucks, British people actually have quite good overall oral health outcomes. If you google, you can find that some studies place British overall oral health ahead of the US.

For anyone who's spent a significant amount of time in the US this shouldn't be too much of a surprise. Middle and upper class Americans have access to excellent dental care, but if you spend some time in the poorer parts of town, you'll see plenty of people with missing teeth and other severe dental problems. NHS dentistry is poor, but it's better than nothing (which is what a lot of poor Americans effectively get).

There's also the aesthetic aspect of it. Europeans in generally tend to be culturally less interested in tooth straightening and whitening.