UKIP sets out post-election terms with Conservatives

By Kylie MacLellan LONDON (Reuters) - The leader of Britain's anti-EU UK Independence Party has offered to do a deal with Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives if they fail to win a knife-edge May election outright. With opinion polls showing it is likely no single party will win a majority on May 7, UKIP leader Nigel Farage said his party and Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party could combine forces to support the Conservatives on an issue-by-issue basis. Cameron has promised to renegotiate Britain's relations with the European Union ahead of a membership referendum by the end of 2017 if re-elected, but UKIP would demand that vote is held this year, Farage said. "I would look to do a deal where we would back key votes for them, such as the budget, but in return for very specific criteria on an EU referendum," Farage said in extracts from his new book, published in the Telegraph newspaper on Sunday. "The terms of my deal with the Tories (Conservatives) would be very precise and simple. I want a full and fair referendum to be held in 2015." Conservative finance minister George Osborne described the idea of a deal with UKIP as "total nonsense" and said his party were fighting for a majority. "Even engaging with Nigel Farage on this is giving him credibility where he has no credibility," he told the BBC. UKIP, which won last year's European elections in Britain, has two seats in the 650-seat lower house of Britain's parliament. They are likely to win only a handful more in May but could threaten Cameron's re-election chances by splitting the right-of-centre vote. The Conservatives have used campaign posters to paint an alarmist picture of their Labour rivals in hock to the surging Scottish National Party (SNP) post-May. Labour finance spokesman Ed Balls on Sunday said his party had "no plans, no need and no desire" for a deal with the SNP. Farage stipulated that only those with British passports should be allowed to vote in an EU referendum, there should be strict spending limits for both sides of the campaign and the wording of the question asked should be, "Do you wish to a be a free, independent sovereign democracy?". "If David Cameron agrees to these terms, provided that the Tories show that they are being responsible about the budget and that they are committed to deficit reduction, there is no question that UKIP would not do a deal," he said. (Editing by Mark Heinrich and Raissa Kasolowsky)