Truss may be trying to steady the ship, but many have fled already

This time last year I was at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester and I typed this: “Writing a column on Westminster isn’t entirely unlike meeting a friend for a catch-up, in that you ideally need at least one thing to have gone wrong in the recent past to really make it worth it.

“No one wants to turn up in a bar and announce that absolutely nothing has happened to them since the last meeting.”

I am currently typing this from Birmingham and, to stretch that metaphor, would like you to picture me practically tripping over myself to get a margarita, sit down and tell you about my weekend.

It all began with Kit Malthouse. The education secretary, broadly seen as a safe pair of hands, gave a speech at a drinks reception organised by the Centre for Policy Studies. In it, he praised two things: Michael Gove and the post-war settlement.

The first was mentioned for his reforms to the education sector, and the latter brought up as an example of a time when parents felt they could say, with some certainty, that their children’s lives would be better than theirs. It was an entirely decent Conservative speech, really; it just felt awkward knowing that, were Liz Truss asked to pick two things to repudiate, she would probably choose those two.

At least he was realistic about his career prospects; the biggest laughs (and gasps) from the audience came from him saying he was looking forward to seeing what he could achieve in office – lengthy pause – over the next few weeks.

A few hours later, Truss herself gave a late-night speech at the Conservative Home party. I will not be repeating the main joke of the speech here – not because it was too lewd to write in a family newspaper, but because I did not get it at all. I was told afterwards that it had something to do with J Alfred Prufrock, the fictional Tory MP sometimes used in ConHome columns.

The bad news for her was that I wasn’t the only one; she told the joke to an audience who should adore her and it fell flat. She paused for laughter and the laughter never came. Suffice to say, her predecessor usually had the room in stitches before even reaching the podium.

Not long after that barnstorming performance, I walked up to a usually affable MP to ask what would happen next. Were they really going to defenestrate her already? “No, I don’t think we will,” they said. (“Interesting,” I thought.) “The only thing she can do now is get better...” (“Oh, perhaps she has some support after all?”) “...because she cannot feasibly get any worse.” (“Ah.”)

Of course, it only went downhill from there; I got back to my hotel about an hour later, opened my laptop and found out that Kwasi Kwarteng had U-turned on the 45p tax cut. Is that good news or bad news for the party? It is far too early to tell.

The climbdown is humiliating – not because voters will care, for they tend to like governments admitting that they were wrong, but because it was a policy so consistent with this government’s vision.

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Another bad omen for Truss and Kwarteng can be seen here in Birmingham (or rather, cannot). There is a hole here in the ICC where many MPs and ministers should be. Several of them announced in advance that they would not make the trip; but that isn’t wholly unusual.

Instead, a constant of this conference has been unexpected cancellations. I was meant to have a frontbencher on a panel I’m chairing tomorrow and he is no longer turning up.

Several friends in the media and the lobbying sector have had meetings, lunches and drinks cancelled at the last minute as MPs changed their minds and stayed at home. Truss might be trying to steady the ship but many have fled already.

What will happen next? It feels impossible to predict. If the past 24 hours in Birmingham are anything to go by, none of it will be good. I can’t wait for our catch-up next week.