While it's true that the US has never practiced direct democracy, it was started as a representative democracy (and a constitutional republe - these two things are not mutually exclusive), which is a form of democracy.

I don't automatically think "English" when I think of the UK. I think English, Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish. (And there are other parts as well? Some of the islands? Cornwall?) But I definitely am not very knowledgeable about the different political realities in the various parts of the UK over the centuries.