They did get into Hegel for a bit, but the subsequent developments in math, language, etc. (what is now called Analytic Philosophy) kind of wiped out the interest in them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_idealism

But yeah, you could probably argue that the empiricist approach never quite went away. Even today, analytic philosophy (which is predominantly an Anglo-American phenomenon) is notoriously uninterested in politics and "big society" questions.