IT says quite a lot about the fragility of Liz Truss’s premiership that her keynote conference speech was generally regarded as a success by disquieted colleagues just because it was not a disastrous failure.

As MPs prepare to return to Westminster, a strong whiff of Conservative mutiny lingers in the air after the PM’s tumultuous debut in Downing Street.

On the back of the humiliating 45p income tax U-turn, Liz’s less-than-fizzy start has seen the pound hit a record low and interest rates for Government borrowing jump, causing people’s mortgage payments to rise, the Bank of England to make an emergency intervention to avert the collapse of pension funds and the fracture of party discipline.

Not surprisingly, Labour has been the beneficiary with polls giving it a 30 point-plus lead.

Just to add to high anxiety at Tory HQ, one snapshot gave Labour a 38-point lead in the northern England “Red Wall” seats, up from 15 just two weeks ago. This points to a 1997-scale wipe-out for the Conservatives.

In Scotland, surveys suggest Truss is even more disliked than Boris Johnson – which is quite something – while Sir Keir Starmer is more popular than Nicola Sturgeon, which is also quite something.

Two polls pointed to a 2024 total wipe-out for the Scottish Conservatives thanks to a rise in support for Labour. Those famous tectonic plates appear to be shifting.

Throughout the past few days, Truss & Co have been trying to convince people – unsuccessfully – that the hike in UK interest rates is simply part of a global phenomenon in an effort to distract from the direct market reaction to the Chancellor’s bungled Budget.

Yesterday, there was a decidedly unhelpful intervention to the Government’s argument by Jon Cunliffe, the Bank of England’s Deputy Governor, who highlighted a graph showing how Kwasi Kwarteng’s “fiscal event” was central to the surge in bond interest rates; the biggest daily increase for a generation.

Mortgage rates have already hit 6% and that’s before the Bank is set to raise its base rate by at least 1% in November and with further hikes expected in subsequent months. Meaning, according to Labour, people face a £500-a-month rise in mortgage repayments; £900 in London.

Housing industry research says 6% rates mean repayments on an average new mortgage will account for more than a quarter of household income; the highest burden since the recession of the early 1990s.

Next year, 1.4m people are forecast to refix their home loans.

So, throughout 2023 people’s fear of losing their homes will grow, underlining how political mismanagement can directly invade the everyday lives of ordinary people.

Not surprisingly, Sir Keir eagerly took to the airwaves yesterday to ram home how mortgage rates were rising as a “direct result” of the Government’s “kamikaze” Budget, branding the PM the “destroyer of growth”.

Next week, it’s said, Government whips will make a “brutal” attempt to instil party discipline, threatening to remove the party whip from any Tory MP who votes against the PM’s finance measures. Good luck with that one.

Having witnessed Truss’s fundamental weakness over the 45p U-turn and the open disunity within Cabinet over not uprating benefits in line with inflation, the rebels have been emboldened, knowing the power now lies not on the Front Bench but on the backbenches.

Grant Shapps, the ex-Transport Secretary, suggested his party leader had just “10 days” to save her premiership and that if MPs thought they would be turfed out at the next General Election, then they could think “they might as well roll the dice … and elect a new leader”.

The ever-helpful Nadine Dorries, the former Culture Secretary, popped up to accuse the UK Government of “lurching to the right,” claiming her party leader had made “big mistakes” in her first few weeks in No 10.

Not content with that, she also stirred the pot on welfare, insisting benefits should rise in line with inflation, arguing a hike in line with wages would be “cruel, unjust and fundamentally un-Conservative”.

So, spending cuts to help fund the £43bn of tax cuts is the next big Conservative battleground.

One ex-Cabinet minister was blunt, telling the Politico website: “The damage is done and it won’t be forgotten. I don’t think Truss can recover from this and can’t last until the next election.”

Christmas seems to be a potential milestone. The Chancellor has his medium-term fiscal statement on November 23 and while he has insisted the OBR analysis will be published simultaneously, there is a belief that when MPs return on Tuesday, Kwarteng will announce he will bring it forward. It just so happens the first question-time in the Commons is Treasury Questions.

So, the approaching dilemma facing Conservative MPs is whether to stick or twist with Truss. Party rules that give her a year’s grace can be changed if the mood takes the 1922 Committee.

Nothing concentrates an MP’s mind more than their own political survival. It’s a key judgment call. None of us knows just yet which way it will go. But the Tory Party is nothing if not ruthless when it comes to ditching a failing leader.

Some, no doubt, would point to Rishi Sunak, the ex-Chancellor, who received the backing of most MPs but fell foul of the party membership. Then, of course, there is Boris Johnson, the modern-day Cincinnatus, who might find the offer of a glorious comeback irresistible.

Napoleon’s return from Elba springs to mind. And we all know how that ended.

As Britain faces a tough winter with the backdrop of high inflation, waves of strikes and, as we were told yesterday, the possibility of rolling blackouts if we can’t import enough gas from Europe, the strain on the Truss premiership shows no sign of abating.

In a few days' time, MPs will be back, knives ready, treading those shadowy Westminster corridors, where many a dastardly plot has been hatched.

Truss has already found out the rollercoaster of high office never stops. Until, that is, voters or hitherto ultra-loyal party colleagues will it so.

Read more by Michael Settle:

On Sunday: Apologies Prime Minister, but the game is up

Sorry Tory spectacle can surely only end one way

Nerves jangling among some Tories over reaction to mini-budget