Robert Buckland has been keeping busy since leaving the government late last year. In December, the ex-Welsh Secretary joined the Foundry Chambers as a barrister, boasting of his “huge experience of criminal, constitutional and public law both as practitioner and law maker“. Just yesterday, he shared even more good news: he’s picked up a third job, now as a Senior Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. A lot on his plate, given there’s an election looming in the next 18 months or so…

Buckland is forecast by UK Polling Report to get a walloping at the next election if the polls stay where they are currently, seeing the return of Heidi Alexander as a Labour MP. Buckland’s diary is presumably so packed it explains why he’s even cancelled his own reselection meeting as the Tory candidate for South Swindon. Either that or he’s thinking of spending a lot less time in his constituency after the election than he’s letting on. To be fair to Robert, he’s not the only Tory MP who’s rescheduled his selection meeting lately. Guido hears that at short-notice Rishi Sunak did the same over the weekend…