From a foreigner’s perspective - tradition is one of UK’s greatest political strengths.
Let’s be honest here, what does the UK have to offer? There are no oilfields like in Texas or the Middle East, no timber like in Finland and Sweden, no uranium like Australia. It’s not the most populous, doesn’t have the highest GDP per capita, doesn’t have the lowest tax, the best social services, the most convenient international connections. It can’t offer the highest wages or the most comfortable living conditions. Why then is what should by all objective measures be a mid-sized European country a proportionally much larger economy with strong global reach?
Fundamentally, there are two reasons:
1. English is the lingua franca;
2. People have been used to congregating here for 200+ years.
Virtually all of Britain’s strongest institutions grew strong because they sat at the centre of a quarter of the world’s population for more than a century, be it educational institutions, tourism, banking, or maritime activities, or even the railways (given how important coal was as a freight profit earner). The City is not rich because London is rich, it is rich because all the rich people are used to going there. The UK has to retain its tradition and a sense of history in order to retain its attractiveness.
Even with regard to domestic politics, tradition is a great stabilising force that is the backbone of British democracy. Unlike most European nations, who have constitutions forged sometimes literally through iron and blood, Britain relies on the “gentle(wo)manness” of her politicians to maintain a stable political system, and as the US has demonstrated, that sense of personal shame (”going against traditions and norms”/“unprecedented in 3 centuries”) can be more effective in preventing malicious actors and their allies from attempting to wield dictatorial powers and damage democracy than a piece of paper, especially as said piece of paper also relies on fallible humans to interpret and enforce it. Despite the inherent unrepresentativeness of many parts of the British system (FPTP and Whitehall being the two prominent examples mentioned here) as well as many unscrupulous characters currently in politics and vying for power (we can make up our own minds as to who these are!) Britain is in no serious danger of democratic backsliding, unlike multiple European countries, and the US, which is quite literally several tens of thousands of voters away from dictatorship.
This is to say nothing, of course, of tourism and immigration that the UK’s sense of tradition and history attracts, which contribute significantly to the UK economy.