Is Jeremy Hunt the last chance saloon for Liz Truss?

The U-turn arrived in dramatic fashion. Kwasi Kwarteng was summoned back from Washington to be fired, just hours after guaranteeing he wasn't going anywhere. Liz Truss – an architect of the very economic policy for which she sacked her Chancellor – may well be a lame duck Prime Minister, but what can we learn about the appointment of Jeremy Hunt as Chancellor of the Exchequer?

Jeremy Hunt is widely seen within the Conservative Party as a sensible pair of hands. He's viewed as a moderate, having served in both the Cameron and May cabinets. In an era of near constant reshuffling, he managed to become the longest-serving Health Secretary in British political history. Of course, being Health Secretary for a long time doesn't necessarily make you any good at being Chancellor. There are many who would suggest he was a very damaging Health Secretary, presiding over a period where junior doctors went on strike for the first time in 40 years after the imposition of new contracts.

He is undeniably less economically extreme than Kwasi Kwarteng. I must confess, I'm surprised he's taken the role, having refused to serve in Boris Johnson's Cabinet as Defence Secretary. Jeremy Hunt does not strike me as someone who would accept anything offered to him in an attempt to advance his political career in the short term. In fact, I would have thought that his political ambitions would have been better served by avoiding serving any role in this car crash of an administration.

Truss's cabinet is – after all – packed full of unsuitable ministers and ideological zealots.

You have a Health Secretary in the pockets of the tobacco lobbyists, and who this morning is believed to be in the process of proposing that antibiotics will no longer need to be prescribed by GPs to cut "red tape" in the NHS. It's a well known fact that misprescribed antibiotics leads to antibiotic resistance – one of the big problems hurtling down the tracks towards us.

You have the Home Secretary Suella Braverman. She's effectively a slightly nastier Priti Patel, but without the self-awareness to realise that she's a xenophobic piece of work. Where Martin Luther King had a dream of black men and white men together at the table of brotherhood, Braverman's "dream" is of deporting them all to Rwanda.

You have the Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg, the haunted pencil himself, who spent the week denying that the market turmoil had anything to do with Kwasi Kwarteng. He is, therefore, presumably in a state of shock that Kwarteng has been sacked at all. In a round of media appearances of which Sir Humphrey would be proud, he spent the week obfuscating in front of radio and TV journalists, spouting rambling nonsense that led to James O'Brien (accurately) describing him as "morally corrupt and intellectually vapid".

And then of course you have Truss herself. An economic idealogue whose convictions have just been tested on the market, and the market has chewed them up and spat them straight back out. She's U-turned on more or less every economic major policy on which she ran for leadership (and one must remember, this was leadership fought primarily on economic policy).

In her press conference, which lasted for only a few minutes, she took only four questions. Whilst traditionally the largest broadcasters like the BBC and ITV get first dibs, she went straight for the safety of the historically-Conservative favouring Daily Telegraph. Donald Trump would be impressed.

So what is Jeremy Hunt doing?

As I see it, there are two possible options:

Option 1

Jeremy Hunt has accepted the position because he truly believes he can steady the ship for the good of the British people. After all, it's hard to look at the job Kwarteng did and conclude that it would be difficult to do better. Hunt may feel that he has a duty to step in and attempt to reduce the hardship and misery that's on its way.

I'm not sure I particularly buy this, and if it were any one of hundreds of other Tory MPs, I'd suggest it's nonsense. But with Jeremy Hunt, there is a possibility that there's a backbone in there, and a sense of moral duty.

Option 2

Jeremy Hunt knows that Liz Truss is done for, and has has a quiet agreement with the likely successors in Sunak and Morduant that he can keep the office of Chancellor should they rise to power.

This would represent the best of both worlds for Jeremy Hunt. He can go into the job today, put out a few fires and essentially just act responsibly for a month or two, safe in the knowledge that this is his job for the next few years rather than the next few weeks.

The final question is whether Liz Truss genuinely believes appointing Jeremy Hunt will save her job. It's an olive branch to Sunak supporters who were widely excommunicated from the heart of government after her accession to Number 10. He's a so-called "heavy hitter" within the Conservative ranks, with whom she may feel she can turn down the heat of pressure coming from the more moderate arm of the party. In terms of those available to her, he's one of the more (as Rory Stewart might say) "distinguished" options on the table.

In truth, I think it's too late, no matter how good a job Jeremy Hunt does. She was done for the moment Kwarteng stood at the dispatch box a few weeks ago and announced his mini-budget/fiscal event/economic handgrenade. The vultures within the party know that whilst she is in office, the ghosts of that day will forever echo out of every speech, TV appearance and policy that comes out of her administration. The confidence of the markets may be able to be restored, but the confidence of the electorate – even the Union-Jack waving, chino-sporting Brexiteers – is gone.

And in appointing him, she has ripped up her entire economic manifesto and created a new problem. Jeremy Hunt completed a media round this morning with a quality of communication and sense of calm that is far beyond the reach of anyone else in her Cabinet – herself included. If Hunt, whose economic theory is diametrically opposed to the PM, manages to succeed then where does that leave her? If the policy that comes out of Number 10 from here on out is clearly that of Jeremy Hunt, who is really in charge of the Government? Those are the questions that will be asked over and over again. It's already begun.

Hunt may delay the inevitable by a few weeks in the long-run, but she's done for. Last night, the murmerings from within the infamous WhatsApp groups and journalistic spheres around Westminster were unchanged: Truss will go.

Once again, it's clear that we're living in unprecedented times.