Red wall v blue wall Shift to right reveals Sunak's numbers game

As political graffiti goes, the message to the Conservative MP Alex Chalk, scrawled on steps in the centre of his Cheltenham constituency, was polite, if pointed.

- Peter Walker Rowena Mason

"F**k off back to France?" it began, using slightly coy asterisks. "Really Alex?" For baffled local people in the genteel regency town who have not been following politics during the summer recess, it was a reference to Chalk's defence of inflammatory comments about asylum seekers made last week by Lee Anderson, a fellow Tory MP and one of the party's vice-chairs.

Using language that, consciously or not, echoed the rhetoric of 1970s far-right groups, Anderson had said refugees seeking asylum should "fuck off back to France" if they did not like being housed on the Bibby Stockholm barge.

Chalk, who is Rishi Sunak's justice secretary and firmly on the more liberal end of the party, was the minister on the next day's morning broadcast round and vigorously endorsed Anderson's message, despite what he termed the "salty" language.

Government ministers often find themselves defending ideas or colleagues with whom they may have little in common. But as an election looms, some Conservatives are wondering whether the increasingly hardright, culture-war-infused stance taken by Sunak could cost them their seats.