Trams work well in the UK. Their advantage is their predictability, both in terms of how long they will be following the exact same route (rails mean this is hard to change) and their ability to remain unaffected by other traffic due to priority signals, some non-shared routes, etc.

Yes they don’t go everywhere, but in the UK we aren’t very spread out in our cities, towns and even suburbs, so it’s reasonable to expect quite a large number of people to be within walking or cycling distance of a tram stop.

Lol, look at a map of Tokyo and Japan's rail network. Or Switzerland, or the Netherlands, or Hong Kong, or honestly nearly anywhere that actually builds rails.

You can do just fine on rails.

Sure, if you want to get into the rural mountains you might need to rent a car. But like, for most people rail will do you just fine.