You risk being stuck with Gordon Brown if you vote anything other than Conservative, says David Cameron

We have just seen a weekend of hype about Nick Clegg in the media on the back of the opinion polls after the first Leaders' Debate.

I am increasingly confused as to whether I watched the same debate as everyone else: Clegg put in a creditable performance, but was it really as ground-breaking as the press reports would have us believe?

It is not entirely unsurprising that the media have been talking up the Lib Dem "surge" these past few days. In what had thus far been a relatively pedestrian campaign, it's a new story to write and mixes everything up a bit.

Likewise, whilst a hung parliament would be a disaster for the country and in particular the economy - as the FT notes this morning - the ensuing political chaos would be a fascinating story to write: many journalists are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of a hung parliament which would be, in their words, "good for trade".

But the need for a decisive election result in which the Conservatives win an overall majority is the message which David Cameron puts out in an interview with the Guardian this morning.

"If you want to be sure of a change of leadership after 6 May, if you want decisive government, if you want to get things done, if you want to get the economy moving, if you want to mend the broken society, then it is the Conservatives that offer that decisive change – anything else and you risk being stuck with what you have got."

"What I want to do in the remaining 18 days of this campaign is to make the case for a different prime minister for Britain, to make the case that if you want to solve the problems we have, then it is decisive change we need, and that is what we offer, and all other options manifestly fail."

And whilst others (such as George Osborne) have attacked the Lib Dems, Mr Cameron remains insistent that he is not going to go negative:

"My response to all this is to redouble the positive. I am sure plenty of other people will now scrutinise Liberal Democrat policies in huge detail, and I am sure that it is a very worthwhile thing to do."

"I am fully aware of their policies. But I choose to accentuate the positive and talk about what we will do and the leadership we'll bring."

"The success we have had over the past four and a half years has been based on being positive, on actually saying to former Liberal Democrat voters that if you want a more family-friendly Britain, a more decentralised Britain, if you want to pass power to people, the Conservative party can get the job done for you."

Jonathan Isaby