whille these recent developments are super interesting and good for the British democracy in the long run, I cant help but feel like this is the wrong moment in time to pull this off.
it's like they dont care/worry about the Brexit anymore, it's like they have in a certain sense "given up" on even attempting to get their shit together till the end of March.

the gang of seven meet the fab four

Literally 2 days after forming:

Westminster voting intention (if IG stand candidates):

CON: 38%
LAB: 26%
IG: 14%
LDEM: 7%

via @YouGov, 18 - 19 Feb

well, this voting intention would certainly shift when left-leaning voters realize that voting for the IG would hand the tories a landslide victory.

I think the UK is really ripe for the introduction of instant runoff voting like in Australia. This way, third and fourth parties can flourish and have a higher chance of getting MPs elected, and it would offer a more accurate and dynamic representation of the political leanings of the electorate.

I think we'll see the conservative voting intention go down in the coming weeks with the 3 Tories leaving today and Brexit reaching its (intended) endpoint. Also factor in that the Lib Dems and Independent Group have both stated they are open to working together and they're not that different politically either.

You're right in that we definitely need to move away from FPP and towards an AV system to avoid the current dichotomy.

The FPP and the two-party system it induces were suitable when there was just one main political and ideological fault line, the one between left and right. But nowadays, there are at least two main cleavages, left vs right and globalist vs nationalist. The latter is present in almost all western democracies and gaining importance, but due to the brexit, the fault lines along this cleavage are particularly visible in the UK. Both Tories and Labour are really split internally along these lines.

In essence, the UK would need at least 4 parties to reflect this:

- economically right globalists (LibDems fit this pretty well)
- economically left globalists (this would be traditional, pre-Corbyn Labour, I guess)
- economically right nationalists (Tories... somewhat?!)
- economically left nationalists (UKIP or Labour under Corbyn)

I also think we need 4 main parties. I loosely agree with your split between globalists and nationalists; obviously there are quite a few complications such as most Labour MP's under Corbyn being globalist socialists but still within the Corbyn cult, and that the Lib Dems are closer to the centre-left than centre-right.

well, actually, there are 3 main fields when I think about it:

economy: left vs right
socially/culturally: progressive vs liberal vs conservative
worldview: globalist vs nationalist.

some of these options dont make sense when combined, for example socially progressive nationalists with right-wing economic beliefs. but overall, there are probably 7-8 sensible combinations. 4 main parties seem like the bare minimum when I think about it.

With multi-partism we got (in France, 2017) a renewal of 75% of all MPs in 1 election.
Maybe last decades evolution of west societies does not fit well with Bipartism

I think you'll be surprised. When momentum have driven out the last of the Labour moderates you'll see just how many "left-leaning" voters are actually left.

The abuse being spewed out from that ragtag bunch of mongrels would scare anyone off.