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Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron waves to the audience after his live televised interview with Jeremy Paxman in London on Thursday.Stefan Rousseau/The Associated Press

It is shaping up to be the wildest of British election campaigns. It may also prove to be one of the most important, with the country's future membership in the European Union potentially hanging in the balance.

The governing Conservatives are locked in an effective dead heat with the opposition Labour in the polls at the outset of a 40-day campaign that begins Monday when the Queen dissolves Parliament. And very few pundits are willing to predict who will lead the next government, or what shape it will take. The only thing that seems certain is that the country is headed for a fractious period of post-election deal-making following the May 7 vote, with neither incumbent David Cameron nor Labour Leader Ed Miliband able to govern without the help of other parties.

The next British Parliament will resemble none before it.

It could be Nigel Farage, the head of the surging UK Independence Party (UKIP) – a party known for its anti-immigrant rhetoric and Mr. Farage's conviction that Britain should leave the European Union – that ends up deciding whether Mr. Cameron or Mr. Miliband becomes prime minister. More likely, it will be the Scottish National Party (SNP) that holds sway.

Being thrust into the role of kingmaker would give unprecedented clout to the SNP, a movement dedicated to pulling Scotland out of the United Kingdom.

The latest poll of polls – conducted by the May2015.com website and including results published by nine different polling companies – gives Labour a slight edge at 34.2 per cent support compared to 33.2 for the Conservatives. Labour is on track to win 273 seats to 271 for the Conservatives, leaving both parties well short of the 326 required to form a government in the 650-seat House of Commons.

The election seems likely to confirm a long-term drift by British voters away from the two main parties and toward movements such as UKIP, the SNP and the Green Party that were once considered the political fringe. Labour and the Conservatives regularly combined to capture 90 per cent or more of the vote in the elections of the 1950s and 60s. But they took just 65 per cent in 2010 and look on course to win similar support on May 7.

On the EU question, Mr. Cameron has promised an in-or-out referendum by 2017 if he's returned to the prime minister's job.

There is also the growing possibility of another Scottish independence drive in the near future, after Scots narrowly voted last year to keep the union intact.

Yet this is also a campaign that opens without a defining issue. The Conservatives want to talk about how, under their leadership, Britain has had the fastest-growing economy in Europe. Labour argues those gains haven't been fairly shared and says another Conservative-led government would mean dangerous cuts to key social programs like the National Health Service. Meanwhile, UKIP, the SNP and the Green Party, and their agendas, are benefiting from the growing anti-establishment sentiment that's U.K.-wide.

"There's a sense that these people [the Conservative and Labour leaders] aren't serving our interests," said David Dunn, the head of the department of political science at the University of Birmingham. The Conservatives, he said, are damaged by the sense that the ballyhooed economic recovery of the past five years has only helped the rich, while Labour is still distrusted by many former supporters because of the Iraq war and the broken promises of Tony Blair's time in power.

In a sign of how cacophonous the campaign will be, Mr. Cameron and Mr. Miliband will be just two among seven party leaders on the stage for the lone televised leaders' debate on Thursday. Mr. Cameron has refused Mr. Miliband's challenge to meet in a head-to-head clash, preferring perhaps to try and look prime ministerial among a rabble of opposition leaders in the seven-way argument.

"The leaders' debate in 2010 [when the Conservatives, Labour and the centre-left Liberal Democrats were the only parties to take part] already looks like a different period of political history, from a country very different to what the U.K. is now," said Roger Scully, a professor of political science at Cardiff University in Wales.

Election day looks likely to be followed by a period of ferocious horse-trading as Mr. Cameron and Mr. Miliband scramble to build alliances that will get them in the door of No. 10 Downing Street. The Queen will ask whichever leader she feels has the best chance of forming a government. The one who doesn't lead their party into government will almost certainly be out of a job.

Mr. Cameron jumped the gun on that when he announced last week that, if re-elected, he would not seek a third term in 2020, pulling the curtain back on a behind-the-scenes race to replace him that was already well underway. Mr. Miliband, meanwhile, is widely seen as a liability to his party who has difficulty connecting with ordinary voters. Many in Labour whisper loudly that they wish Mr. Miliband's more charismatic brother, David, had won the party's fratricidal leadership contest in 2010.

Mr. Miliband's chances got a boost Sunday from a YouGov poll that showed Labour pulling slightly ahead, at 36 per cent to 32 per cent for the Conservatives. It was the first poll published since the two leaders were separately interviewed by broadcaster Jeremy Paxman ahead of the launch of the campaign.

The path to power is nonetheless likely to be much more complicated than in 2010, when the Conservatives, having won the largest number of seats, quickly cut a deal with the third-place Liberal Democrats that resulted in the coalition government that has lasted for the past five years, with Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg serving as deputy prime minister to Mr. Cameron.

It was a deal that cost the Liberal Democrats dearly, with supporters particularly disillusioned by Mr. Clegg's reneging on a pre-election promise to oppose any increases in university tuition fees. The Liberal Democrats, who won 22 per cent of the vote and 57 seats in 2010, stand at just 8 per cent in the latest polls, forecast to lose more than half their seats.

UKIP is now the clear third party with 13.8 per cent in the latest poll of polls. However, its support is spread evenly across much of England and Wales, and it's not clear how many seats that will translate into. (Most projections have UKIP capturing fewer than five seats.)

If the polls are right, the SNP will stand as kingmaker after May 7 and be in a strong position to extract concessions from Mr. Miliband in exchange for lending its support to a Labour-led government.

The Scottish nationalists have seen a huge surge in support following a hard-fought referendum campaign that saw 45 per cent of Scots vote for independence in September. The SNP, which currently holds six seats in Westminster, is on track to win as many as 55 of Scotland's 59 seats this time around, including many seats that have been Labour strongholds for generations.

Part of that surge is attributed to a sense in Scotland that the main parties have at least partially reneged on a last-minute promise of more powers for Scotland, a promise that many feel helped clinch the referendum for the No side. The SNP also saw its membership base quadruple following the referendum, giving it an army of motivated campaigners that the other parties can't match in Scottish constituencies.

"What you're seeing is the solidifying of nationalist support. Rather than bringing the question of Scottish devolution to an end, [the referendum] has actually provoked more long-lasting divisions in Scotland and the U.K.," said Prof. Dunn.

Mr. Miliband has already ruled out the possibility of a formal coalition with the SNP. But both he and SNP Leader Nicola Sturgeon have pointedly left open the possibility of a "confidence and supply" relationship that would see the SNP vote with Labour on an issue-by-issue basis.

Many believe there is no workable arrangement in the offing. Mr. Farage has already warned that, in the case of a hung parliament, the country could see another election before the end of 2015.

"Voters must decide between a government led by a Labour Party once again seen as well-intentioned but lacklustre, and a Conservative Party whose shortcomings are as familiar as its strengths," wrote Michael Ashcroft, a Conservative member of the House of Lords, Britain's Upper Chamber, who is also a respected pollster.

"Paradoxically, the fact that the voters find the choice so uninspiring has given rise to the most exciting general election I can remember."

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