In one month, Britain votes in a general election likely to put the nail in the coffin of two party politics and herald an uncertain future of coalitions, alliances and horse-trading.
Neither of the two parties which have dominated parliament since the 1920s, the Conservatives and the Labour, is expected to win the 326 House of Commons seats out of 650 needed to govern alone.
They will likely have to team up with a smaller party or parties instead.
The prime minister after May 7 will be one of two men — the incumbent, Conservative leader David Cameron, who currently heads a coalition government, or his Labour counterpart Ed Miliband.
Those two points aside, the rest is about as murky as the River Thames.
“We are now in a de facto multi-party system,” said Simon Hix of the London School of Economics (LSE). “A third vote Conservative, a third vote Labour, a third vote somebody else.”
The BBC’s opinion poll tracker currently puts the centre-right Conservatives on 34 per cent and centre-left Labour on 33 per cent, followed by the anti-EU UKIP, junior coalition partners the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and a string of other parties. As if that were not complicated enough, the election is also bringing into focus two important ways in which Britain’s identity could change in the coming decades.
Nationalist parties, particularly the pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP), look set to make major gains, which could hasten the loosening and eventual break-up of the United Kingdom.
Support for the SNP has surged even though Scotland voted against independence in a referendum last year.
It is expected to win most of Scotland’s House of Commons seats in May and says it could be prepared to prop up a minority centre-left Labour government in return for key concessions.
“The UK is now evolving towards a quasi-federal country,” said the LSE’s Tony Travers.
He added that the SNP’s main aim “would not be to produce a stable government in the UK — it would be to have another referendum on Scottish independence”.
Then there is the possibility that Britain could end up leaving the European Union as a result of the election.
Cameron has promised to hold an in-out vote by 2017 if the centre-right Conservatives win outright on May 7.
