What would you buy Keir Starmer for Christmas? Here’s Matt Chorley’s gift guide for politicians

After the wild year we’ve had, you’ll be wanting to buy a little something for the politician in your life. Luckily help is at hand, with BBC 5 Live presenter Matt Chorley’s exclusive gift guide that will have Big Ben’s bells ringing out on Christmas Day.

Keir Starmer 

Something from Pets At Home. When I interviewed him a few days before the election he told me his kids were lobbying for a German Shepherd if they moved into No 10. When I spoke to him again in September he revealed that he had “negotiated” down to a kitten, called Prince. By next Christmas the Starmer kids will be thrilled to have a stick insect. Get him some cat litter: dry, dull and useful for absorbing unpleasantness, the PM will appreciate the thought. After taking down all the portraits (because he doesn’t like how the eyes follow him round the room, like he’s in Scooby Doo) he could also do with some new art for the walls. Something upbeat to counter all that “things are going to get worse before they get better” doom and gloom. A nice motivational poster reminding him others have it worse: “Live, Laugh, Gove.”  

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Rishi Sunak

An umbrella. Who knows what the outcome of the election might have been if he had decided not to call it in the final scene of Four Weddings and a Funeral. Is it raining? He hadn’t noticed. Well the rest of us did. Having secured his own place in the history books with the worst ever result for the Conservative Party, he might enjoy a short guide to D-Day (hopefully he will stick with it until the end). 

Boris Johnson

He’s already had a gift from me. We share a publisher, and when my paperback came out they sent me a boxful for friends and family. But when the delivery company sent me an email saying it had been delivered, the photo clearly showed the former PM on his doorstep from the waist down (unusually, but thankfully, fully dressed) and Dilyn the dog. In the mix-up I was sent a box of his books. I thought about keeping it, but like the rest of the nation’s booksellers, I couldn’t shift them.

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Sue Gray

You get a carriage clock for working somewhere for 25 years, but what about if you barely lasted 25 minutes? In a meeting of advisers in the cabinet room on the last day of September, Gray declared: “Despite what you read in the papers, me and Morgan [McSweeney] do get on… we should do this again soon.” Four days later she was fired. Sorry, demoted to being envoy for the regions and nations. A job she never took up. Somebody buy her a LinkedIn subscription. If she needs advice on how to make short jobs seem more impressive on her CV, she should have a word with the chancellor. 

Kemi Badenoch

A baseball cap. If the Tories have any hope of returning to power, they need to spool through their stages of post-defeat grief quickly. So by Easter she should have worn a baseball cap on a log flume, have been the quiet woman turning up the volume, and asked if you’re thinking what she’s thinking, before finally putting a wind turbine on her house and getting to know what a Lib Dem is, before making a big and open offer to form a coalition.  

Rachel Reeves

A subscription to The Economist. That would be useful. And a boxset of Shaun the Sheep, featuring the only farmer in the country who doesn’t currently hate her. And that’s only because inheritance tax rules are different if you’re made from plasticine. 

Angela Rayner

The cabinet’s biggest Ibiza raver would love a cocktail shaker for Christmas. Or maybe just a silver-plated bucket. She once revealed to me her favourite drink to get a party started: “Venom… it’s a litre of Absolute Vodka, a litre of Southern Comfort, about 10 bottles of blue WKD and a litre of orange juice.” One colleague ended up asleep in the dog’s bed after downing a glass.

Ed Davey

For a man who lives every day like he’s using up a Virgin Experience voucher, it’s hard to know what he hasn’t done: water sliding, kayaking, bike riding, paddleboarding… I even interviewed him on a roller coaster on Brighton pier. The poor man just wants a sit down with a nice pot of tea. Although he’ll almost certainly put the tea cosy on his head, while solemnly declaring this demonstrates the need to reform the National Audit Office. 

Nigel Farage

Get that man an atlas for Christmas. He clearly has no idea where Clacton is. That’s the only explanation for why he keeps ending up in America. With all that trans-Atlantic travel, he might appreciate a nice Kardashian-style velour tracksuit, in Reform UK teal. And maybe one of those eye masks embroidered with “Princess Sleeping”.  

Every new MP 

Just give them a break. Most of them didn’t expect to win, and now they’ve barely got a desk and an inbox full of people, people like you, demanding they sort out next door’s hedge, or the smell on the bus, and being banned from the doctor’s after punching the GP. Be nice to them. One of them will be PM one day. And possibly sooner than you think.  

Listen to Matt Chorley live from Westminster, weekdays from 2pm on BBC Radio 5 Live. 

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