A survey before Boris Johnson’s victory in December showed 60.3 per cent of people were unhappy with the political system

Voters’ faith in democracy in the United Kingdom suffered one of the sharpest falls of any country in the world after the Brexit referendum polarised politics, research has shown.

Three in five people are unhappy with Britain’s political system after a dramatic drop in satisfaction over a 15-year period.

Such levels of dissatisfaction were last recorded in the 1970s during the Winter of Discontent when the Labour government struggled in the face of widespread strikes by public sector workers demanding pay rises.

Although the most immediate factor was the long-running parliamentary impasse over Brexit, which ended with Boris Johnson’s election victory on December, the rise in dissatisfaction with democracy in Britain can be traced the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq war, the MPs’ expenses