Liz Truss’s appearance before MPs at the 1922 committee on Wednesday evening was meant to be part of a wider charm offensive as she tries to get MPs back on side after a tricky start. With Labour enjoying a large poll lead and market turmoil dominating the news, Truss needs to keep her party behind her. Yet that is looking rather uphill. As James Forsyth reports on Coffee House, the mood amongst backbenchers leaving the meeting was (to put it politely) mixed. ‘It was painful,’ says one attendee. Other words used to describe the session include ‘awful’, ‘funereal’ and ‘brutal’.

Truss attempted to win over assembled MPs by promising further reach out and parliamentary engagement. She heralded her energy support plan as something Labour had not matched – thereby giving Tory MPs something to go out and flag to voters given the ‘devastation that would have been caused to small business had we not acted’. She did concede that the ‘the ground could have been prepared better’ with the markets when it came to the not-so-mini-Budget. However, many MPs present felt the mistakes went further than just pitch rolling and that this was not acknowledged. MPs report audible groans when Truss said interest rate rises were global rather than linked to mini Budget troubles. Already there are growing calls from within the party for Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng to cancel more tax cuts. This morning Foreign Secretary James Cleverly refused three times to confirm that the government won’t U-turn on keeping corporation tax at 19p. Instead, he said the foundations were essential but Kwarteng’s Halloween fiscal event will put out a more ‘holistic’ assessment.

Where there is a growing consensus is that the whipping operation is not up to scratch. The chief whip Wendy Morton is already the subject of criticism in the party for her blunt manner after it fell to her to sack various juniors ministers in Truss’s reshuffle. MPs say she arrived late. What’s more, usually the government whips work to ensure there are a number of friendly – or at least ‘non-hostile’ – questions at these meetings, given how widely they are reported, so as to make it easier for their boss. Yet MPs in the room say only two questions fell into the neutral category – the rest were openly hostile.

Making matters worse is the fact that the difficult questions came from various wings of the party. ‘It wasn’t confined to one faction,’ explains an attendee. MPs including Mark Harper, Rob Halfon and John Baron were among those voicing concerns. The MP for South Suffolk James Cartlidge won a warmer reception than the prime minister when he said the party needed to regain its ‘reputation for fiscal credibility’. It led to MPs banging the tables so hard that there were fears they could break.

However, the most painful intervention came from the education select committee chair Rob Halfon who accused Truss of badly damaging the blue collar brand of conservatism with policies such as abolishing the banker bonus cap. Halfon said Truss was ‘trashing workers’ conservatism’ – ‘in the last ten years we had the living wage, a focus on apprenticeships and skills’ contrasting that with ‘bankers’ bonuses, benefits cuts and now cuts to affordable housing targets’.

This session was always going to be difficult for Truss. After the not so mini-Budget backfired, it was inevitable that MPs would want to vent their frustrations. However, several loyalist MPs left the session not just down about the state of the party but the fact the whips had failed to take a few obvious measures that could have made it less painful for an under fire government. It means there is increased talk about Truss’s position with her party.