You might have thought Grant Shapps would have put aside his famous spreadsheets after his unceremonious Cabinet defenestration last week. Alongside dealing with rail strikes, Shapps famously spent much of his final months in Boris’s Cabinet trying to keep his boss in power by tracking backbenchers via his spreadsheets – predicting the vote of no confidence result to within just one MP. Skills he failed to utilise successfully in his own leadership bid…

A new job advert for a parliamentary researcher role in his Commons office has now appeared with the following skill requirement:

“MS Excel or Google Sheets experience essential. You don’t have to be a spreadsheet genius, but you do need to be competent.”

Laying the groundwork for a second leadership bid in 2024? Watch this space...