That's how it's always been. Northern Irish terrorism was used to justify many restrictions of civil liberties in the UK, and while opposition figures made disapproving noises nothing actually changed and their opposition was limited to expressing their opinions while sitting in comfy chairs.
It's one reason I left the UK in the first place; not because of facing personal discrimination for being Irish (I did face some but most British people are pragmatic and fair-minded), but because of the whole securitized atmosphere with security cameras everywhere - it was like being in prison.
However, I have little hope of this changing. As far as I can tell the vast majority of people value security over privacy or autonomy, and of course they never think Bad Things are going to happen to them because they're Good People - like the woman in the news the other day who voted for Trump and is now surprised that her husband is being deported even though he's not a 'bad hombre.'
It's unlikely that there will ever be a mass movement for privacy and autonomy, because the genius and failure o democracy is that it's harder to blame your problems on some antipathetic Other - foreign invaders, aristocrats, an elite social class or whatever. Democracy really depends on people thinking about issues, and most people want to be firmly embedded in a social context, perhaps because were a eusocial species. It's hard for them to conceptualize an oppressive state in the same way that it's hard for most people to imagine hating their parents or the people int heir community.
Happily, as far as digital technology is concerned there is not a whole lot the UK government can actually do about the issue, and May's speechifying is more directed at appeasing the drooling tabloid-reading class than it is reflective of any serious policy initiative. the likely effect sit aht operating systems on computing devices sold in the UK won't be allowed to have built-in encryption and the smart set will be using mods of some sort. Pretty much how it was with PGP 25 years ago.
