Originally Posted by Jdoughs

Use the tld, use the country code meta, get UK backlinks.

It's actually a lot easier to get a localized keyword.tld then a keyword.com if you are trying for that specific tld at google.

If you are a confirmed UK site, with UK tld, and UK country codes, you'll have a 10-20X's easier go at ranking on google.co.uk then if you had used a .com. BUT that is only going to give you local weight and doubtful you'll ever see it show up on .com since you've specifically told them its for UK searches.