Labour Party activists hold signs as they heckle Nick Clegg during his visit Swansea, Wales, on Monday, April 19

Blog: The Tories were looking decidedly panicky at the weekend in the aftermath of Nick Clegg’s forceful performance in the first of the leaders television debates. And you can understand why, writes John Hipwood.

A clutch of polls have shown a strong rise in support for the Liberal Democrats, and one BPIX in the Mail on Sunday put them ahead with 32 per cent, one more than the Conservatives and four up on Labour.

Anything like this in terms of the share of the vote on May 6 would almost certainly leave Labour with most seats in the House of Commons, followed by the Tories with Lib Dems quite a long way back.

When the winner finishes third you can see why Mr Clegg’s party wants to change from first-past-the-post to the single transferable vote system of proportional representation, which is not the same as the halfway house alternative vote model proposed by Gordon Brown.

But, instead of firing off all sorts of (largely unsupportable) charges against the Lib Dems, William Hague and the other shadow cabinet ministers ordered onto the offensive should heed the irritating advice of Michael Winner in those motor insurance advertisements: “Calm down dear, calm down.”

Mr Clegg has certainly brought himself and his party into contention in this election, but his standing is not on a par with the ridiculous headline in one of the Sunday papers which compared his popularity with Winston Churchill’s.

The only war that Cleggie has fought was with Chris Huhne for the leadership of his party three years ago.

Mr Brown conceded yesterday that Mr Clegg’s performance had “opened up the campaign”, and continued to spin that he had lost “on style and presentation”.

It suited Mr Cameron to make out the election was only a two-horse race between tired old Labour and their unpopular leader and the Conservatives, brimming over with new ideas and vitality.

Now that the electorate have seen that there is vitality and freshness elsewhere, the Tories have to rethink their strategy.

Labour can see the advantage of a relatively strong performance by the Lib Dems at the election, but Mr Brown and Peter Mandelson were still sucked into an offensive yesterday, the latter agreeing that the election had now “come alive”, but also warning of the “dangers” of a hung parliament.

Nick Clegg, not David Cameron, now looks the Man on a Mission. It’s now up to the Tory leader to regain the initiative.

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The Electoral Reform Society was actually out campaigning for a hung parliament today, complete with an effigy of the Big Ben clock tower with a noose around its neck.