Talk:Tristan Garel-Jones

MOT Certificate
The whips, I'm told, have a lot of influence over junior ministerial appointments, because the Prime Minister is usually too busy playing musical chairs with the Cabinet and does not know many of the new MPs other than by sight. In practice a Prime Minister may well defer to recommendations like "I know X wants Y as his junior minister, but he's useless and disloyal. Z is quite good though and has done good service on the Select Committee on Paperclips, time he was made a Parliamentary Under-Secretary." I don't have a cite to hand, but did it not used to be said in the 1980s that in order for a backbencher to get promoted he needed his "MOT Certificate", standing in this case for "Mate of Tristan"?Paulturtle (talk) 06:19, 7 February 2018 (UTC)