It is an axiom of politics that, at a time of crisis, deputy heads must roll. So it has proved for Kwasi Kwarteng, ousted as Chancellor.

He is entitled to feel somewhat aggrieved. The unfunded tax cuts in his mini-budget were promised, repeatedly, by Liz Truss in her successful campaign for the Tory leadership.

It was her plan, her ideology. Her dream – or, as her rival Rishi Sunak put it, her calamitous and impractical fantasy.

However, any sympathy for Mr Kwarteng is decidedly tempered by reality. He took the job. He shared the ideology. And he set about promulgating those unfunded tax cuts with unparalleled zeal.

The financial markets, placed on a burnished pedestal by Ms Truss and Ms Kwarteng, took fright at the consequences for borrowing and thus fiscal stability. Said markets duly plummeted, taking the Chancellor’s reputation down with them.

Hence his removal and hence the further substantial U-turn announced by the PM. To placate her party conference, she abandoned plans to scrap the upper rate of income tax (except for Scotland, where bands and rates are devolved.)

Now a much bigger change. She has announced that corporation tax will rise in line with previous promises, recouping £18bn for the Treasury and, she hopes, soothing anxious financiers.

What remains of her own credibility? Precious little. Which showed in her demeanour at a truncated Downing Street news conference.

I said previously that she looked like an anxious Akela trying to muster an unruly Cub Scout pack. As she set out her mission to reassure, Akela looked even more fretful and unsure, as if some rascal had pinched her woggle.

She might recover, of course, if the markets revive. But her standing right now is pretty much zero among voters – and, crucially, among Conservative MPs.

Some on the back benches and in government feel she must be given a further chance to deliver upon her determination to create a low tax, high wage, high growth economy.

Other Tory MPs think the next election is already lost. That it is all but impossible to recover a reputation for financial credibility, once it has been shredded in such a spectacular fashion.

Others believe only a further change in Downing Street, at Number 10 rather than Number 11, will give the Tories anything approaching a fighting chance in 2024.

Liz Truss, in short, is now fighting to retain a job she gained just a few short weeks ago. Her choice as the next Chancellor confirms her determination to convince the markets of a commitment to financial discipline.

Jeremy Hunt is not quite old school Tory. But he is both experienced and respected. Adjectives one would not readily apply to every member of Team Truss.

Crucially, he represents a reassuring glance backwards. After a prolonged spell as Health Secretary, he took over at the Foreign Office when Boris Johnson resigned.

Mr Hunt came second to Mr Johnson in the 2019 Tory leadership contest but was eliminated in the first round earlier this year. He may be said to represent more established Toryism. This, again, is no accident. The hope is that turmoil will be tempered by stability and comforting familiarity.

So what now? Within the dishevelled fragments of the Conservative Party, those who have been overlooked or dismissed will ponder, privately, upon their own prospects.

Also at Westminster, His Majesty’s official Labour Opposition will speculate as to how quickly they might be given a chance to supplant the current, troubled administration. As things stand, they look a fair prospect, despite the majority Liz Truss inherited.

And the SNP? Inevitably and understandably, they will calculate the extent to which the omni-bourach might hasten the advent of independence. We await the publication next week of a renewed economic prospectus for independence.

Also, this week, we had two days of fascinating exchanges in the UK Supreme Court as to who has the power to call indyref2. I watched, engrossed, for many hours.

Plus, of course, earlier in the week, Nicola Sturgeon presented her party’s conference in Aberdeen with a new perspective on independence; one built upon the current crisis, but with a subtle shift.

Look globally and contemplate history. Sub-state Nationalist movements are frequently founded upon flight. They offer escape from perceived tyranny, whether it is physical, cultural, religious or economic.

Modern Scottish nationalism has seldom been based upon flight. To be brutally frank, the Scots do not feel sufficiently oppressed for such a pitch to work.

However, they do feel proud. The SNP concept, then, was that Scotland should have the confidence to run her own affairs again. Confidence, not fear.

But it ran up against the counter offer. The “aye, but” of Scottish politics. That independence might be philosophically appealing but that the UK provided a platform for common endeavour, with the broad economic shoulders to deliver such a project.

Now those broad shoulders seem slumped in despair. Folk in Scotland and throughout these islands fret about their jobs, pensions and living standards.

Perhaps the latest U-turn will deliver results. But, right now, the Union is a harder sell than previously.

Nicola Sturgeon knows that. However, she resists the temptation to sound the alarm in Scotland and yell “flee for your lives.” She eschews the simplistic offer of flight.

Instead, she posits independence as a refuge. A safe haven in which to shelter, protected from the “chaos and catastrophe” of UK economic stewardship she described in her Aberdeen speech.

There is a further element. Instead of abandoning the UK, she argues that an independent Scotland could rebuild connections with our neighbours in a new “voluntary partnership of nations.”

Self-evidently, her pitch faces several challenges. Firstly, Liz Truss – or another Tory PM – may generate results. The current chaos may subside.

Secondly, Labour may gain Westminster power with a prospectus perhaps somewhat closer to the Scottish consensus.

Ms Sturgeon has a rebuttal ready. She depicts Labour as ready to bolster the Tories on occasion, for example over sustaining Brexit.

And she argues that it is the entire Westminster system, not just here today and gone tomorrow ministers of either party, which is responsible for the gulf between UK governance and Scottish aspirations.

Remarkable times.