Cameron fires himself up amid complaints of a lacklustre campaign

Pumped-up, jacketless and red-faced, David Cameron tore up his cautious campaign plan and shouted himself hoarse as he sought to inject some passion into the Conservatives' pitch to voters.

With 10 days until the general election and his re-election as prime minister far from assured, Mr Cameron warned that Britain was "staring down the barrel" of an anti-business Labour government as he launched the party's small business manifesto in the City.

Bounding on to the stage with his sleeves rolled up and suit jacket off, he told a standing audience of small business leaders and entrepreneurs that the risks they take starting new ventures "really pumps me up".

"I really feel so passionate about this election, we've come so far," he told his audience. "If I'm getting lively about it, it's because I feel bloody lively about it. That's the truth."

Speaking without notes, he hailed entrepreneurs as the "magic ingredient" powering the economic recovery and vowed to "work the hardest I've ever worked in my life" to shift the polls.

"If you think I am going to roll over in the next 10 days and let Ed Miliband and Alex Salmond wreck that [recovery], you've got another thing coming. We have got a fight on our hands. This is a battle for the backbone of Britain, that is what this election is about."

Mr Cameron's energetic performance - he ended the rally with a sweat patch on his shirt - is an attempt to address concerns that he appears to lack conviction and seems distracted. With the polls still deadlocked, there is growing unease among candidates over the campaign.

Conservative party insiders acknowledged on Monday the prime minister had stepped up a gear. "This is a different stage of the campaign," said one party figure. "This is the final push. Cameron is good at unscripted moments and Miliband isn't - of course we are going to draw out that contrast."

Mr Cameron defended his return to the theme of economic competence for the final full week of campaigning. "There are people who say this economic stability, this economic security is boring," he said. "Well, I don't think it's boring. It's the most important thing for the economy to generate the jobs and the growth and livelihoods and pay for the public services we need. Never take economic stability and economic security for granted."

In the small business manifesto, the prime minister pledged to increase the number of new business start-ups to 600,000 a year by 2020 and also promised to review into the "disadvantages" the self-employed faced over access to maternity pay, pensions and securing mortgages.

The Tories faced embarrassment when it emerged that a letter signed by 5,000 small business owners published by the Telegraph was organised by Conservative Campaign Headquarters. The managing director of one Berkshire-based company, Aurum Solutions, subsequently said she had not authorised the use of its name.

But another signatory, Andrew Hyett of APD Interiors, London, was impressed with the prime minister's performance.

"My definition of a good leader is would I follow him up a hill and take a machinegun nest with me? Watching him today, yes I would: there was a passion in him and he said the right stuff."

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