HOW long can she last? Across the Sunday papers and politics programmes a clock was ticking ever louder on Liz Truss’s premiership.

Can she make it to October 31 and the Chancellor’’s statement? Would she be gone by Christmas? Or would the markets have the final word when they opened, first in Asia then in London?

The new Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, spent Saturday on a round of interviews aimed as much at calming the Conservative party as the City. Even BBC1’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg had to make do with a pre-record.

If the intention was to instil calm and a sense of business getting back to normal it was only partly successful. Mr Hunt was doing a decent enough job in the part of “adult in the room”, saying all the right things in all the right places. Many of his colleagues, meanwhile, were still acting like bonce-less chickens, hoping for a replacement Prime Minister.

Ben Wallace and Rishi Sunak had their admirers, Penny Mordaunt, too. There was even a suggestion Theresa May might like to come back, which has to be up there with the betting on who can last longest, Ms Truss or a wet lettuce, for surreal developments.

Kuenssberg’s key question was a modern variation on a classic: not “Who Governs Britain?” but “Who is really in charge?” First, she asked a panel made up of Tesco chairman John Allan, Christine McAnea, the general secretary of Unison, and Matt Hancock, former Health Secretary, what should happen next.

Mr Allan, straight-talking businessman, said the Government had a “moral responsibility” to help people in crisis, and Ms McAnea called for a General Election. Mr Hancock went for what might be termed the EastEnders approach. “This needs sorting,” he said.

What precisely required sorting was not clear at first. Until Sunday, the only direct demands to replace the Prime Minister had come from anonymous Tory MPs. Mr Hancock was not about to change that on live TV. He did, however, call for a reshuffle to bring all parts of the party together.

Other MPs did break cover. Interviewed on Sky News’ Ridge on Sunday, Robert Halfon, chairman of the Commons Education Committee, did not deny that MPs are considering installing a new leader.

“Of course, colleagues are unhappy with what is going on,” he said. We’re all talking to see what can be done about it.”

While stopping short of calling for the Prime Minister to go just yet, he did launch an extraordinary attack on the Government.

“I worry that, over the past few weeks, the Government has looked like libertarian jihadists and treated the whole country as kind of laboratory mice on which to carry out ultra, ultra free market experiments. And this is not where the country is. There’s been one horror story after another.”

Another MP, Crispin Blunt, told Channel 4’s Andrew Neil Show that the “game is up” for Ms Truss.

“It’s now a question as to how the succession is managed,” he said.

Back at the Hunt-Kuenssberg interview, all was calm. With Mr Hunt sticking to the same script used in other interviews, Kuenssberg had little chance of getting a different line. What she could do was take the part of the viewer anxious about making ends meet and have the Chancellor speak directly to them.

So it was we learned about the return of “compassionate Conservatism”, a phrase first borrowed from the US and adopted by former Tory premier David Cameron. “This is a compassionate Conservative Government,” said Mr Hunt.

Asked who was in charge, Mr Hunt said it was the Prime Minister. Voters can still put their faith in her, he added. “She’s listened. She’s changed. She’s been willing to do that most difficult thing in politics, which is to change tack.”

But make no mistake. Mr Hunt’s every action since taking the job has been about signalling that Trussonomics is no more. He may not have replaced Ms Truss as Prime Minister, but he has certainly binned the manifesto she campaigned on to be leader.

(Interestingly, Mr Hunt, who has twice stood for leader without success, ruled himself out of any future contest, saying: “The desire to be leader has been clinically excised from me.”)

It was notable, too, that while warning of tough times ahead he said it was not going to be the austerity of old. Was this a signal that whatever else happens, benefits will be uprated in line with inflation?

That, like much else, remains to be seen. Tick-tock, tick-tock.