I've tried applying for QA, but in the UK there just seems to be a smaller games industry.
You have drawn the wrong conclusion from your experiences.
Read http://sloperama.com/advice/lesson5.htm and http://sloperama.com/advice/lesson24.htm - then revise the conclusions you should draw from your previous experiences.
Again: look beyond how hard you tried to apply for QA jobs before, stop thinking that the problem is the UK job market, and see the real flaws in what you did.