Cameron has to face egg and Clegg

David Cameron took his election fightback into the Liberal Democrat heartland yesterday, but found himself battling egg as well as Nick Clegg after being pelted by a student.

With a fresh batch of opinion polls mostly confirming a sustained bounce for the third party, the Tory leader travelled to marginal seats in the South West to renew his warnings about a hung parliament.

Voters had to choose between an outright Tory win or "five more years of Gordon Brown (or) the uncertainty, the bickering, the haggling of a hung parliament", he told activists in Devon.

A refusal of proportional representation would form part of a seven-point Tory plan to reform politics, he said, alongside measures such as power for voters to remove misbehaving MPs, more accountability for ministers, open primaries and a referendum on any future transfer of powers to Brussels.

He delivered the speech not long after becoming the first party leader to fall victim to flying food on the election trail this time around after being hit by an egg thrown as he visited a college in Saltash, Cornwall.

Mr Cameron made light of the missile - which left a yolk stain on his white shirt as it ricocheted off his shoulder into a nearby police officer - joking that it was "the first of the campaign".

"Now I know which came first - the chicken not the egg," he said, a day after coming face-to-face with a man protesting in a chicken costume in the West Midlands.

The 16-year-old egg-thrower named as Tyler Dixon - a student at the college - was briefly arrested while he was searched for other projectiles and Cornwall College Saltash said it was "disappointed" he had spoiled the event.

Mr Cameron had been answering questions from students before the incident and later went for an impromptu walkabout among people enjoying the sun on the seafront in Torquay where he strolled with an ice cream.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw said: "David Cameron says he wants a new politics but he blocked moves to give the British people the chance to vote on a new voting system, and pulled out all the stops to keep hereditary peers in the House of Lords.

"When you peel away the rhetoric, it's clear that the Conservative Party hasn't changed."