UK was never much of a democracy

The concept of "democracy" is very loaded, but let's focus on its most basic part - people vote, and whoever gets majority of votes gets to run the government for the next few years. UK fails this standard miserably.

Here's percentage of votes in Parliamentary elections received by whoever got to run the government over last hundred years. And it wasn't any better before:

• 1918 - 38.4%
• 1922 - 38.5%
• 1923 - 38.0% (minority government)
• 1924 - 46.8%
• 1929 - 37.1% (party which "won" didn't even get plurality)
• 1931 - 55.0%
• 1935 - 47.8%
• most countries continued having regular elections during wartime, but UK didn't even bother
• 1945 - 47.7%
• 1950 - 46.1%
• 1951 - 48.0% (party which "won" didn't even get plurality)
• 1955 - 49.7%
• 1959 - 49.4%
• 1964 - 44.1%
• 1966 - 48.0%
• 1970 - 46.4%
• Feb 1974 - 37.2% (party which "won" didn't even get plurality)
• Oct 1974 - 39.2%
• 1979 - 43.9%
• 1983 - 42.4%
• 1987 - 42.2%
• 1992 - 41.9%
• 1997 - 43.2%
• 2001 - 40.7%
• 2005 - 35.2%
• 2010 - 59.1% (coalition)
• 2015 - 36.9%
• 2017 - 42.4% (minority government)

So in 27 elections, there were only 2 cases where government was actually backed by majority of the votes. And usually these weren't narrow margins just a bit under 50% (like George Bush in 2000 or Donald Trump in 2016) - it's routine for parties to govern with just 35%-40% support.

In fact it's more common for a party to "win" without even getting plurality than for someone to actually get genuine democratic mandate.

There's a lot of concern about democracy fading worldwide. When you look closer, maybe there wasn't that much of it in the first place.