Chris Bryant, a UK government minister and author of a revealing new autobiography, ponders how he copes with adversity as we share an incongruous summer’s day curry in a deserted Westminster.
“I have a degree of emotional resilience. I just do – I don’t know where it comes from,” says the Welshman (63).
He needed it, judging by some of the things he has endured. An unhappy home life as a youngster; sexual abuse by a trusted mentor; relentless scrutiny when as an Oxford-educated, gay former Anglican priest he ran for parliament in the flinty toughness of the valleys of south Wales.
The chronology of Bryant’s startling new book, A Life and a Half, ends at that point in 2001 when he was elected Labour MP for the constituency of Rhondda (now Rhondda and Ogmore). But the challenges he was forced to surmount did not.
RM Block
In 2003 he was ridiculed and almost buried beneath a deluge of homophobic judgment when tabloids published his profile picture from the Gaydar dating website. It was a snap of Bryant posing in his underwear while showing off his toned physique.
In 2019 he was diagnosed with skin cancer and given a 40 per cent chance of surviving more than 12 months. Last year, the cancer returned after spreading to his lung. He is currently feeling well after further treatment.
Bryant’s achievements have also been numerous. Before his 24-year (so far) stint as an MP, he had a varied pic’n’mix of successful careers including political adviser, charity manager, BBC lobbyist and full-time author – A Life and a Half is his 12th book.
Yet it is the headwinds he has faced and his poise while striding through them that mark Bryant out and have shaped perceptions of him.
As resilient as he might be, there is also a vulnerability there that he doesn’t flaunt, but which flickers just beneath the surface when he is prodded in a certain way.
The combination of the recollection of what Croft did to him with the memory of his difficult relationship with his parents brings Bryant’s patter, until then upbeat and cultivated, to a juddering halt
I ask him about the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of Michael Croft, the founder of the National Youth Theatre. He preyed on a teenage Bryant, who never spoke about it publicly – nor much in private – until the release of his book this summer.
“It is part of my story. For a long time I told nobody. I carried the shame all my life and when I first told anyone, I cried for ages,” says Bryant of the grim encounter, which he says made him feel like a “16-year-old whore”.
Did he ever tell his mother or father? Bryant’s mother was an alcoholic whose antics blighted his youth, while his father, Rees, was a cold, distant man who divorced Bryant’s mother and from whom he remained estranged for decades.
The combination of the recollection of what Croft did to him with the memory of his difficult relationship with his parents brings Bryant’s patter, until then upbeat and cultivated, to a juddering halt. His eyes glisten and he appears to gulp for air.
“No,” he whispers, shaking his head. It appears to be all he can manage to confirm he hid his darkest secret from the two people to whom he should have been closest, but who appear to have failed him at times, enmeshed in their own flaws.
Bryant insists the abuse did not destroy him and he “refuses to be a victim” of Croft’s. Up to six men with similar tales of abuse by the late former theatre boss – “two of them much worse than mine” – have contacted Bryant since his revelation this month.
Lots of people sent him “lovely messages”. But predictably and depressingly, he was also set upon by trolls, “random strangers who sent me messages that are utterly vile”.
Bryant finished writing the book before last summer’s election. Then followed a long editing process and a period of back-room scrutiny by government powers – normally a minister would not have been allowed to publish such a book, and it is likely he was only allowed to go ahead with it because he was contractually obliged.
Bryant recently recorded the audiobook version. Reading it aloud, he said, made him feel like Narcissus, the Greek mythological figure who luxuriated in his own reflection (Bryant can produce a classical or literary reference to suit almost any moment).
“I was holding myself up to a mirror during the audiobook recording, more so than writing it. I realised the emotions I most often talk about are anger and guilt, with a little bit of shame thrown in. That was a bit of a revelation for me.”
The book is filled with a litany of Bryant’s eye-popping escapades as a gay man about town, including during his post-ordination period travelling around Latin America – he quit as a priest in 1991 after four years – and his early adulthood in London.
“There’s quite a lot of shenanigans in there. My husband [Jared] had editing rights on anything related to sex and sexuality,” says Bryant. Your husband edits with a light touch, I suggest. Bryant’s eyes twinkle and a facetious smiles creeps across his lips.
Just before meeting for our curry, a questionable decision on a hot day, I contact one of Bryant’s closest confidantes in politics, a fellow Welsh man who soldiered with him in parliament. The friend lauds Bryant as “the closest thing we have to a public intellectual on the left in British parliamentary politics”, suggesting he should be in cabinet.
Bryant has ancestral roots in the McLeod family from the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. US president Donald Trump’s mother was also a McLeod from Lewis
This seems to delight Bryant, who is the UK Labour government’s minister for a vast portfolio, including the creative industries and arts, tourism, data protection and telecoms. Does he feel he should be in cabinet?
“These are not judgments for me to make,” he says, with performative coyness. “But I can assure you I have no desire to be prime minister.”
Being forced to look after his alcoholic mother after his parents’ divorce when he was a teenager turned Bryant into the person who always believed he could fix everything, the “adult in the room”. Is this desire to fix things what drove him to be an MP? He agrees.
“Anger and powerlessness. They motivate me a lot, and that stems from my mum’s relationship with alcohol. You feel powerless watching someone slowly killing themselves. You want to fix that.”
Bryant has ancestral roots on his Scottish mother’s side in the McLeod family from the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. US president Donald Trump’s mother was also a McLeod from Lewis. Back in 2017 while in opposition, Bryant called for Trump to be banned from Britain. These days, as a minister, he sounds more diplomatic.
“I guess we’re related,” he says. “He’s always welcome to invite me round.”
Bryant remains an ardent Remainer, even though his working-class post-mining constituency voted Leave. He believes Britain went through a “nervous breakdown” following the Brexit vote.
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party is now targeting Welsh constituencies such as Bryant’s for its next wave of growth. Does the rise of Farage’s party concern him?
“Any politician who refuses to take seriously the concerns of people who are thinking of voting Reform is an idiot,” says Bryant. “The bit I don’t like about politics is when it is all about manufacturing grievances. I can’t be bothered with that.”
His political rivals are probably scouring the “shenanigans” in A Life and a Half for anything to throw at him in advance of the next election.
Why did Bryant write such a revealing book when he is targeting another 10 years as an MP? He says he wanted to show that politicians “have their own stories”.
“We’re not all identikit politicians,” he says.
He plucks yet another literary reference, this time from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice: “I also wanted to show that if you prick us, do we not bleed?”
