It's something that sat in my heart for a very, very long time
because I feel all the shame and guilt that we're not that I
think many gay young men at that time grew up with generally
about their own sexuality, felt really concentrated in that
moment. And I hadn't told many people at
all until two or three years ago.
And then when I told a couple of people then I couldn't stop
crying. So there's probably more hurt in
me about it than I would recognize.
Hello and welcome to the forecast.
His new book is called A Life and a Half, The Unexpected
Making of a Politician. But really, Chris Bryant's
biography is a tale of multiple lives.
There's the Oxford educated Anglican priest turned Labour
councillor, MP, government minister and now knight of the
realm. And there's also childhood in
fascist Spain, in a dysfunctional family, the home
he found on stage at the National Youth Theatre and the
sexual assault that came with it, and the spirited embracing
of his sexuality, which combined protest, prejudice and quite a
lot of partying. So who is the real Sir Chris
Bryant? He joins me now.
You, you are this contradiction, aren't you, in that your very
establishment, in some ways, you know, Oxford politics, the
church, and yet you kick against it all.
I, I feel as if I've, I've occupied a niche in virtually
every portico in the establishment over some at some
point that you, you, you've left out the BBC as well.
So the BBC, the Church of England, Oxford and all the rest
of it. Yes, very much.
And I went to prep school, public school, all the rest of
it. And yet, and yet I didn't end up
a Tory MPI didn't end up in, and you know, working in the city or
whatever, or a barrister. I ended up as a Labour MP for
the Rhondda in South Wales. Yes, and, and I suppose part of
what the book when, when, when my editor was saying, well, what
we going to call this book that was part of the thinking behind
it was I'd, I'd keep on quoting this line from Stephen
Sondheim's Follies. And then she careered from
career to career. And there is a bit of that about
my previous life. And I suppose part of the reason
for writing it was wanting to work out how did I end up being
the person I am? And are there things that I
still need to correct about myself?
Yeah, I mean, the the book is, there's a great deal in the book
about childhood and family and then young adulthood.
There's an awful lot in there about sexuality and being gay
and how you felt about it along the way.
Is it too much? No, but I mean it.
It makes you feel as though that's been quite a a very
defining thing for you. Oh, it has.
I mean, well, I mean, of course it is.
You know, working out your own sexuality is a really important
part of working out who you are. And, and I guess you know that
there's a generation of people who've grown up in now who had
no idea that when I was born, it was a criminal offence to have
for a man to have sex with a man.
And when I all through my, my time at university and the age
of consent for gay sex was 21. So anything I did at university
with another man was completely illegal.
And so that, you know, understanding that and then the
moment of liberation that came when the laws changed and when
things were possible for people to live a life together.
It is, is one of the parts of the story I really wanted to
tell. I mean, for instance, I, I tell
the story of telling my mum that I was gay.
She's coming to stay with me. Her, her life was a bit of a
mess. She was coming to stay with me.
By this time I was already an Anglican priest and, and I said
to her, look, I'm gay. And she says to me two things.
First of all, well, I should, she should always have known
because I have such a funny walk.
You're not allowed to look at me as I leave just to check.
But also she said, Oh, but the, the, I mean, the terrible thing
is, of course, Christopher, you'll be lonely in old age
because that was the fundamental belief that everybody had about
gay men in particular, that in old age they will be lonely.
Maybe for lesbians like the old ladies of Llangocklan from in,
you know, the 19th century, it will be different.
But for men, you would be lonely in old age.
And that's why it's such an amazing thing to live in a
generation where I can talk about having a husband.
I mean you, you talk about for quite a long time, not really
knowing what your sexuality was, having a girlfriend, a partner,
but but not really thinking, not really being sure what you.
No, well, and I was at I went to Cheltenham College and there
were only boys at Cheltenham College in those days that there
was Cheltenham Ladies College down the road.
But the, the, the twain should never ever meet was the was the
kind of rule except that I, I don't know what inspired me, but
I wanted to act in every single play.
I wanted to sing in every single Choral Society because that
meant I could spend time with girls and I and when I was at
school, I had quite a lot of girlfriends.
And then it was my wonderful girlfriend Donna, great singer,
who when she woke me up 1 morning, I mean, I probably
wasn't meant to be sleeping with anybody because I was a priest
in the Church of England. And she said, Crystal, you do
know you're gay, by the way, don't you?
And and then it, it's not that I, I don't feel it's like it was
something I came to terms with it just kind of I settled into
it. Did you not want to be gay, You
know? Well, it's not that I wanted to
fight it, it's more that I kind of presumed that I wouldn't be
because the world presumes that you won't be.
And, and incidentally, it still does today that, you know,
understandably, the vast majority of people are not gay.
And so the assumption is you'll get married to somebody from the
other sex, you'll have children and, and you know, you'll,
you'll maybe have a couple of dogs or a cat or whatever, and,
and then you'll have doting grandchildren around you in old
age. And, and of course that that
whole world has changed for many people's expectations now.
But for me, Oh, and of course I was involved in the Church and
the church when back, back in those days had a kind of don't
ask, don't tell kind of line. And then it kind of worked out
that that didn't work anymore. And I knew so many priests in
the Church of England who'd long given up their faith.
They used to go on holiday to Mykonos or Sitches or Fort
Lauderdale or whatever, have affairs whilst they're away.
Desperately hoped that there wouldn't be anybody from the
Daily Mail or the News of the World there and and then come
back and have to live a life of complete celibacy and and a
hidden life. And then they'd be terribly
bitter. I.
Mean do you think you might have been a Bishop or a or a cabinet
minister? Well, if you hadn't been gay.
I know that we're looking for an Archbishop of Canterbury and I
am still available technically. Oh, I don't know.
I was told, I remember going to see Bill Westwood, who was the
Bishop of Peterborough when I was the youth chaplain from the
for the Diocese of Peterborough. And I said, look, I'm leaving.
I'm 29. I know this isn't right for me.
I'm a gay man. And he said to me, it's one of
the stories in the book. He said, look, Christopher, if
only you knew how to keep your mouth shut, you could have enjoy
all the things that I do. You'd get to be a Bishop and
you'd be he'd have regular lunches with Margaret Thatcher.
Now for me, Margaret Thatcher was anathema a from a Christian
perspective because I just thought that what she was doing
was despicable and wrong for the country, but equally because she
she'd just done a great big speech about how homosexuals
shouldn't expect that they had a right to exist.
And so, and then introduced Clause 28.
So for me, it was part of what, you know, stirred the, the
political pot for me, I think, and transformed me from the, the
little Tory who arrived at Oxford and to, to, you know, the
young lad who went off to Latin America to look at liberation
theology and understand what, what, how Christians could
respond in a world of phenomenal poverty.
And what? Why were you the Tory who went
to Oxford? Was that because of parents?
Yeah, so I, you know, my life started in Cardiff, but my
parents originally met when mum was a makeup artist.
She looked after Shirley Bassey's wigs and dad, dad had
grown, you know, left school at the age of 15, not many
qualifications. Went to work in Spain in a in a
summer on in a hotel and they met and mum and dad then
married. They produced me and every
summer mum, dad used to go and work in Spain, in the hotel in
Salao and and so we. And then he quite he quite liked
the fascists. Oh yes.
And I think, well, he always thought that we, everybody had
misinterpreted what Franco was about.
My first political memory is, is driving to the, in a misty day
when we were living in Madrid, driving to past Caravan Shell,
which was the political prison not far from where we lived in
Madrid and seeing all the guards that gather the Athi Ville with
their black patent leather Tricon hats, long capes and
submachine guns because Franco was coming to visit.
And that was my first memory of totalitarian or my impression of
totalitarian government. I mean, it was meant to inspire
fear and it did inspire fear. But dad's view was rather
different. He, he and, and hardly anybody
in those days, British people used to go to Spain because of
Franco. But we we did and we lived there
from from me for the age of 7 to 12.
I remember very clearly one day, we'd only recently arrived going
down, I was playing in the street.
I don't know what I was doing, playing with a stick and making
marks in the sand And some kids coming up to me and saying, oh,
yeah, oh, yeah, Oh yeah. Belli Rojo, ginger.
And and then tie me to a tree and flicking pine cones at me
because I couldn't speak Spanish.
So I learned Spanish pretty quickly.
But in terms of sort of how life might have.
Oh, but you were asking me how did I become the Tory that went
to Oxford? So.
So we. You know, were you, were you,
were you made a Tory basically by your upbringing.
Because I went, I went when we lived in Spain, I was sent back
to boarding school in Scotland. I tell some interesting stories
about boarding school in Scotland.
Sex comes into that as well. And then I went to Cheltenham
College because we'd moved back to the UK, We were living in
Cheltenham and the kind of expectation was that everybody
would be a Tory. Whoever went to Cheltenham
College, that I mean, it was built to produce soldiers or
administrators for the Raj. So that was the common kind of
expectation. Though what I did in at
Cheltenham College was act and singing choirs.
And so my life was kind of different.
But by by the time I arrived at Oxford, I was I, I was, I became
a member of the Conservative Party partly to make sure that
William Hay didn't win the the leadership of the Conservative
Association, which in which I succeeded.
Though he says everywhere that I wore a cravat every day, I was a
doctor. This is completely untrue.
I might have owned a cravat, but I'm not sure that I wore it.
What? Why did you dislike William
Hague? Because he was on the anti
European sort of hard line end of the Conservative Party, the
Thatcherite end of the Conservative Party.
And so, and during my time at Oxford, I, I certainly changed.
I think one of the things that also changed me was the National
Youth Theatre. So I first went to the National
Youth theatre when I was 15. I was the only public school
boy, I think in the, in the Myti absolutely loved it.
I met people from every other experience.
I was a 15 year old on my own in London without any parental
supervision and I had all the freedom in the world and that
sort of changed my outlook and stuff as well.
And then I went to Latin America as part of my training for the
priesthood in 1986 and I spent months in a shantytown in Peru,
in Lima, commerce and saw things.
I saw a country that had phenomenal wealth, I mean, such
extraordinary fruit and veg, and yet people who died of
starvation and a very violent continent.
And there was a curfew on at the time because of the activities
of Sendero Luminoso. And then I went, it was in
Argentina just after the dictatorship had ended, and I
knew friends who'd been tortured.
And then I was in Chile. I had to leave Chile.
So, so the journey from right to left was over that that period.
I mean, you also sort of imply from the book that it was, it
was Section 28 that. It was.
Certainly big you against the Tories.
Well, I couldn't understand why anybody would bring forward
legislation to restrict people's freedoms.
I just thought everybody should be treated equally under the
law. And of course, it mattered
personally to me as well. Yes.
And also I, I thought I saw, I suppose I was infuriated by
hypocrisy in the church, all sorts of different kinds of
hypocrisy. When I was at Theological
College, Cudston, there was a strange thing called the Deanery
of Muns. It was a toilet on the top floor
in the college. And the top floor had 12 rooms
and the 12:00 rooms could elect the new Dean who would be
enthroned on the toilet. And there was all sorts of
religious paraphernalia put in this toilet.
You could say it was harmless fun, except that mine was the
first year when there wasn't just one woman in the college.
There were 13 women in the college.
So suddenly the men, some of the men, in particular the gay men,
wanted to kind of ostracize the women.
And, and for us, some of us on the feminist liberal side who
wanted to sort the ordination of women and so on, getting rid of
the Deanery of Muns was a symbol.
So we just dismantled it. One night we took it all out and
dumped it outside the door of somebody who's actually now a
Bishop, and we were hounded. For the rest of that year nobody
would talk to us and that kind of hypocrisy in the church which
I associated with hypocrisy within the Tory party, all
became part of the same thing I. Mean obviously you've got to get
through a lot of stuff in a book like this.
So you're, you're covering 40 years, but there are two big
turning points in your life that I, I feel I kind of, I want more
on, you know, 1 is why you became a priest and the other is
why you went into politics. Now, when you talk about going
into the church, I mean you, you say you didn't have a sort of a
sudden religious calling a moment.
So what was it? Well, I had a sort of moment
which I describe in the book, which was we were, I was on tour
with the National Youth Theatre. We were taking two productions,
Richard the 2nd and Good Lads at Heart round Europe.
We opened the new Royal Theatre in The Hague, for instance, but
and it was when before a tech rehearsal for one of the shows
that I remember walking into a cathedral and having a feeling
that I should do something more with my life than just
frivolity. It's nothing more than that.
It's not sudden. I can't hear angels or anything
and there's not a great big finger pointing down at me and
say, you know, come and do this. But the church is quite a thing
to decide to do from that, isn't that?
I mean, there are all sorts of things you could have decided to
do. True.
And of course, in the end I ended, I, I chose other things
to do, but I, I think it was partly so my mum was alcoholic
in, in and it destroyed, you know, my teenage years were
really rough because of that. I ended up being the man of the
house. Dad left and that he was right
to leave because mum was such a mess.
I was doing the ironing, I was doing the cooking, I was doing
everything really in the house. And, and it, it was just on a
daily basis, it was just utter misery.
It was the lies. It was the, have you been
drinking, Mum? No, what's that water, Mum?
It's clearly vodka. And then, you know, the rows
and, and I said probably horrible, horrible things to mum
for which I still feel guilty. And she said horrible things
back and then she'd fall and then I'd be taking her to the
hospital or, and then or sometimes I took her through DTS
and all of that. And two things I think from that
that mattered were one was that I found that I was actually
quite a resilient person. I didn't fall apart.
And that's not because I'm a fundamentally good person.
It's just because I had some kind of strength which I thought
I shouldn't just use for myself. And the other thing is that
nearly everybody who supported me during those times was
involved in the church. My English teacher Tim Pearce at
Cheltenham College or in my final year.
Things at home were so terrible that I had to live with the
school chaplain and his wife, Sam and Margaret Salter.
And Margaret says, well, she's, she's no longer with us.
But Margaret used to say that because I was so grumpy at
breakfast time, they just used to leave me.
I still am instantly. They just used to leave me
completely on my own for 15 minutes with the Guardian.
And that's what changed my politics.
That's what she reckons my, my dad always read the Daily
Telegraph. Suddenly I was reading the
Guardian. So I think it's that
combination. And so it meant that the my
first day at Oxford, my first Sunday, I went to church.
I chose to go to church. Because you start off talking
about how there's another itch I can never scratch enough.
I have always wanted to change the world.
The sense that something just isn't fair drives me crazy.
I mean, is that a post hoc explanation of your life or is
that? Conscious of how you felt.
I, I, I think so the thing about alcoholism as a, as a child of
an alcohol is, is you just feel so powerless and it makes you so
angry. And then you feel guilty about
feeling angry with the person that you want to love.
And then you feel angry that they're making you feel guilty.
And so it's, it, I mean, it all gets wrapped up into this
horrible, horrible thing of powerlessness.
And so I, I mean in a way the, the, the thing that I think now
and, and it's, it was very striking to me when I was doing
the audio book. So reading it out six months
after the last take, as it were, that of when I've been writing
it. And what struck me was, well,
actually, you felt powerlessness.
You hate feeling powerless. And that's true today too.
And so you want to exercise power.
That's probably why I'm a politician.
Yes, well, that, that, that. Well, that was the next term,
isn't it? That you you, you leave the.
Church, but but I think also, I mean, it's worse.
I, you know, my, my theology, my religion was never, you know,
praying to a God with a great big beard up in the sky.
It was never that kind of it. Was primarily about helping
people rather than a spiritual. Well, I not not least because I,
I, I, I don't think Jesus was very interested in metaphysical
issues. He was much more interested in
practical teaching about how we live our lives here on this
earth. I mean, do do you, do you have
faith? Do you believe in?
Yes, I have. I have a faith, but it's the
faith I always had. How literal is it when it comes
to? Oh, it's never literal.
I mean, and, and, and fundamentalism I abhor in
politics or religion or anything like that.
I, I have a very pragmatic Christianity and I have a very
pragmatic understanding of politics that it's that that is
always the same. But I, I refer to a word that I
really, really love in Spanish, which is ochala.
It's a, it's actually a sort of Arabic word and it means I sort
of, I wish or would that or if only.
And, and that's a really strong part of what I, what every
single day I wake up with, which is if only I could change this,
if only I could be this, if only I could, if only Gaza were
different or whatever. I mean, it's hundreds and
hundreds of things that I feel that about all the time.
And sometimes that powerlessness is so oppressive that you,
that's when you you want to burst out with rage and change
the world. And, and that's why you decided
to go to party politics, which is why you wanted to be an MP,
because you thought, well, that that's how I can change the
world. Well, partly because I decided I
could no longer do the Church because I didn't want to end up
being a bitter, twisted priest in a parish, you know, not able
to leave the Tide Cottage because I couldn't afford it,
But. And no longer.
So you entered another deeply hypocritical world in which.
People. Well, no.
What I mean is in which people were were equally hiding their
sexuality and being hypocritical about all those sorts of things
as well. Well, I didn't think, I didn't
think of it that and I don't think of it in that way.
I think of it as a place where you have to be honest, as honest
as you can. And and incidentally, I mean,
one of the things that's strange about writing a book like this,
which is of course inherently narcissistic.
So I've made myself feel guilty about that as well.
And then crossing myself for feeling guilty is that you you
do have to check some of the things that you always thought
were facts. My mother always said that her
my father played for Glasgow Rangers.
I didn't believe her, but it's true.
He did amazingly and had pretty good good career footballing
career. But other things I've had to
check to make sure that my memory is actually accurate.
Which turned out not to be. Sometimes they it's turned out
to be no, I I can't possibly have been there.
I mean it just doesn't add up or or sometimes I've had to.
Things have been in in a wrong order in my mind and and working
out the order is kind of intriguing.
We'll, we'll come back to politics, but I mean, one of the
big stories that you've revealed is about the National Youth
Theatre in your time there. And you've, you've, you've done
this in the press as well. In that you've, you've revealed
that you were sexually abused by the founder of the National
Youth Theatre, Michael Croft. Why?
Why did you come out with this now?
How about how you know? Had you built up to it for a
long time? Had you?
So it's a story that's always been there.
No, it's something that sat in my heart for a very, very long
time because not because I feel particularly traumatized by it,
but because I feel all the shame and guilt that were not that I
think many gay young men at that time grew up with generally
about their own sexuality felt really concentrated in that
moment. I tell the story as matter of
factly as I can in the book, so I.
Why do you tell it matter of factly?
It's interesting that the way you tell it for something that's
so emotional. And I hadn't told many people at
all until two or three years ago.
And then when I told a couple of people then I couldn't stop
crying. So it probably is more, there's
probably more hurt in me about it than I would recognise or I
would want to recognise. And probably I like to think of
myself as resilient and so therefore I am resilient, if
that makes any kind of sense. So I told so in essence, I, I,
I'd done a years. I, I, I've been in the, I was in
the National Youth Theatre my first year on a course for in
when I was 15, I got to know Michael Croft.
He was the founder of the National Youth Theatre.
I clearly became a bit of a favorite and a protege fairly
quickly. The next spring I, he, he rang
up my mother and said, would Chris come and help with the
auditions in Bristol? I'm a 16 year old and I'd go and
stay in Bristol and stay overnight.
And you know, he, he, I mean in, in separate hotel rooms.
But nonetheless, you know, we go to dinner, he wants me to come
back and have a whiskey in his room with him and all that kind
of stuff. But I kind of work out very
quickly then. And when, when I then joined the
season that year that the best way to deal with Michael was to
make sure if he had another glass of port, he would fall
asleep and then it would be fine.
But he used to take me to dinner regularly.
We would chat. I would unburden myself about
all the stuff at home. I was, you know, that's this is
the the worst point in my with the stuff with mum and and then
one night my normal plan just didn't go right.
There wasn't any ports. I I was back at his house.
I went off to the loo. He came back.
He was just wearing a kind of silk dressing gown and nothing
underneath apart and said, he said come and suck on this.
And I, I mean, of course it's terrible.
It's, you know, he was abusing his position of trust as much as
anything else. And I know there are other
people in the National Youth Theatre who went through the
same and who went through much, much, much, much worse.
After that. Michael never did it again.
And I ended up doing his funeral because he asked me to.
Yes, I mean your you know your your friendship, relationship
with him our. Friendship indeed, and.
How do you explain that now? I mean, do you, do you think you
were sort of basically still groomed or, or, or was it a
genuine friendship? I mean, what you know, you
officiated at his funeral, I mean.
I think it was a genuine friendship and I didn't.
I didn't feel destroyed by it, but I know that there were
others who had put him much, much worse situations than me.
And one of the reasons I decided to, to include it in the book
was because I, I, I know that there are others and I, and I
mean, the response since this came out in some of the press, I
mean, most, the vast majority of people have been gorgeous and
lovely and, and very supportive and understanding.
Some people have been utterly vile, you know, and said, you
know, aid refused to believe me, said it's just despicable.
You're just trying to sell a book and all that kind of stuff.
And and that's when you kind of realise why lots of women never
go to the police when they've been raped, why lots of people
have never bothered to say when they've been abused, because you
end up getting as much of the abuse in social media as anybody
else did. Why do you think people have
some people have reacted like that?
Is it? Is it because they knew him or
is it? No, no, no, no.
Oh, I have. No, I've, I've not spoken to
anybody who knew Michael. Who's that?
No, these, these are people just emailing me because it's easy to
find an MP, isn't it? And send them an e-mail or send
them a message on social media. And I mean, look, I'm, I'm not,
I don't, I refuse to be a victim in it, if you see what I mean.
Yes. I'm telling what happened
because I I think that too often abuse of that nature happened in
a lot of organizations and nobody ever owned up to it.
And that is a fundamental failing and we need to change
that whole culture. That's why I told the story.
And you, you, you, you sort of brought the National Youth
Theatre in on your. Completely.
Oh yeah, no, I mean I, I. Told and I should say they they
sort of said that they, you know, they've got safeguarding,
you know, practices in place now and then I.
I've talked through all their safeguarding practices and I
know that the National Youth Theatre is a fundamentally safe
place and I and I think any modern youth organization would
be absolutely well apart from the else.
The law is much clearer now than it ever was, and everybody knows
what their responsibilities are. Yeah, what do you.
I mean, I, I should also say just for transparency, I'm on
the Development Board of the National Youth Theatre was also
in it as you were about 10 years after you, but.
Oh, so you're younger than me? Is that the point you're?
Making no, no, I I was just very slow, but but I just say that
just for. I mean, I think that so I, and I
think that you think it's a wonderful organization and, and,
and if, if I'm weighing the balance of was the National
Youth Theatre good for me or not?
It was 100% transformative in a wonderful, wonderful way.
It's not just that all those, you know, vocal exercises,
pataka pataka, pataka pataka Papa get a petal copper plate to
kettle, all of that kind of stuff.
It's, it's, it gave me a different set, a new family.
I mean, Ed Wilson, who was Michael Croft's successor, and
Brian Lee, they were absolutely adorable with me.
I went on holiday with them and Daniel Craig and others and, and
they were really important to me when I was leaving the church
because they were church people as well.
They were really important to me in in providing me with that
kind of transition into a new world.
And how can we be more confident now that these?
Well, I certainly am in, in relation to the National Youth
Theatre because, and I've gone through all, you know, they've
talked me through all the, everything that happens and it
is extremely rigorous. Nobody works in the National
Youth Theatre unless they've gone through not just the simple
BDSM checks, but the, but the full second level as well.
And, and I, I, I mean, I tell another story in the book about
when I went, when I applied to Oxford and I was interviewed by
a tutor at Saint Kat's and he made me read out a, an essay on
a poem by Shelley Montblanc, which is a difficult poem,
sitting on a toilet whilst he lay in the bath soaping himself.
Now, I mean, some people said to me, well, why haven't, why, why
didn't you report that? Well, because I, I assumed I
wouldn't then get into Oxford. So of course I didn't.
And that's the abuse, isn't it? It's the abuse of the position
of trust and of power that that still makes me really, really
angry. Do you think it makes you a
better politician? Well, I, I don't think there's
any points to a politician unless they've got some kind of
edge to them and, and an understanding of humanity and
what it is to, to be human and take some of the knocks.
And there are lots of different ways of, you know, taking the
knocks and proving your resilience in life, I suppose.
And I think you want people to be resilient but also sensitive
enough to the world around them that they don't, you know, that
they're not completely out of touch.
Yeah. And I suppose this this comes
back to sort of the, what the real Chris Bryant is, I suppose,
you know, in terms of sort of when you talk about edge, do you
see yourself as that person who has to kick from the inside?
Yes, I I, I mean. You know you join all these
establishments, Yes. Do you know do you do that?
Oh, I've always wanted to fit in.
To fit in rather than. Change them?
Yeah, well, no, I've wanted to fit in, but also to change them.
And that's a difficult. I mean, you know, when you're a
I'm a minister. I'm not here as a minister now,
but I'm a minister in the government and I'm part of a
team and I and I and I always want to be part of a team.
I think teamwork is it's why I'm a socialist.
And I would use the word socialist to quote John Dunne,
no man is an island in tar and to himself seek not to know for
whom the bell tolls. It tolls for the I am a part of
humanity and I I am passionate about that.
But it's funny, some people have looked at the photos in the book
and they said you still stand in exactly the same way as when you
were a 7 year old child with one my right foot always slightly
forward. And I think Matthew Paris in his
autobiography wrote that you, you can never really understand
the man unless you've understood the, the, the child because it,
that's when you feel most keenly and so on.
I'm, I'm not sure that's entirely true.
I still feel just as keenly as ever before.
But I think all the things that course through my veins now
course through my veins when I was an 8910 year old.
Yes, but I but I suppose what having joined, well, wanting to
join the team and be part of the team can sometimes make people
then look away, shut up, keep quiet, not complain, not demand
more. Are you, are you one of those or
are you one of those people who internally is more of a
troublemaker, wants to kick against things, wants to change
things? I don't think of myself as a
troublemaker, but I do think of myself as being independently
minded. There's a funny thing, you know,
there's a, there's a photo in the book of me theoretically in
the cricket team at school when I'm 12, I think, except
everybody else is in cricket wise and I'm, I'm the scorer.
So I'm part of the team, but I'm not really part of the team.
And, and weirdly I've got my eyes closed.
I don't know why. Maybe it's just the way that
maybe it's just the way the photo was taken.
But, and I sometimes feel that's me, that I'm in the team, but
just slightly to one side, which is maybe that's what a Labour
person always feels. Because you, you, you don't want
to accept the world the way it is.
You do want to change it, whether it's the establishment
or it's just the world. I mean, you know, I remember
when I was at theological college, it used to drive me
insane if people asked us to sing.
The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, God made
them high and lowly and ordered their estate.
I mean, where on earth did anybody get that idea from?
Not from Jesus. But but it's interesting that
that you joined institutions where as a gay man, you, you
know, you were not easily going to be accepted as part of the
team ever and and what you know and arguably may still not be.
No. Well, it's interesting in
politics. And you didn't go in, you didn't
stick with acting where you probably could have been
accepted as part of the team. Why do you think that is?
I don't know, I mean. You know you.
Politics for me started my first elected office, was a Hackney
councillor, and I tell some awful stories about what Hackney
politics was like back in those days.
Absolutely vile and horrible homophobia being thrown around
all over the place. I, you know, but I also tell
stories of phenomenal gay abandoned at a particular time.
My I, the day I had stopped being a vicar.
So my last sermon was at Peterborough Cathedral on Maundy
Thursday in 1991. I drive down to London.
All my furniture has gone ahead of me and is now stacked up in
a, in a flat in London, in Hackney.
I walk in the flat and I think, oh Lord, I'm not going to do
anything about this now. So I put on the tight white
T-shirt and a pair of Levi fiber ones, the official, you know,
regulation uniform of the day for a gay man.
Go off to the London Apprentice, a club that no longer exists,
whether it's Black Walls, walk up to the bar, order myself a
pint. And then suddenly realized, just
as it's already been poured, that I haven't got my wallet
with me. And a young man standing next to
me, balls, shorts, ginger with a Glaswegian accent, said to me,
it's all right, I'll pay and you don't even have to have sex with
me. And it was Jimmy Somerville
who's who'd provided the, the, the, the kind of soundtrack to
my life, as it were, of, of coming out.
And and that was a phenomenal period of change in the 1990s,
AIDS still around, very much so. And and a generation of gay men
slightly older than me had all gone.
All gone. But if that's what you mean by
the period of liberation, do you that's the 90s?
The 90s yeah, completely before I became an MP and and then I
worked for the BBC, did various different things, worked for the
Labour Party for a while. I was there kind of at the
beginning of New Labour. First met Peter Mandelson in The
Changing. Room I was YMCA You you, you
tell a couple of funny stories about Peter Mandelson in the
changing room with the YMCA and also in a in in a couple of gay
bars. Yes, we went to Paris to go
there once. Picking up people.
Picking, well, I'm not sure he'd managed in the end, but yes, he
was trying. Though.
I think my favorite is I was dating a Spanish architect at
the time called Federico, and in Madrid, and the only person who
D won any elections anywhere in Europe for years, on the left
was Philippe Gonzalez, the leader of the Spanish Socialist
Party. And so I was staying with
Federico for a couple of weeks and Peter decided to invite
himself because there was a general election in Spain and he
wanted to see how they won elections.
So Peter came and stayed with us, and I then went around with
him to all the various party election meetings and did all
the translating for him. We were at the very last kind of
reception or big kind of rally of the campaign.
Pedro had just done Philippe, rather had just done his big
speech. And we were asked, would we like
to come and meet Philippe Gonzalez?
And I'm really, really excited thinking this is my political
hero. And Peter goes, no, I want to
meet him over there. So we went and chatted to
Antonio Banderas for half an hour instead, and then he sent
me back for his autograph. Have you have you checked any of
these stories with him? But he doesn't mind putting them
out. Members that story.
There's there's a particularly funny one in a bar of him
pretending to be someone he isn't.
Well, yes, because he, so we were in a bar.
We were in Le Quezal in Paris, which has a very long but, or
used to have, I don't know whether it exists anymore
actually, but it had a very long bar.
And Peter's going I like him over there and I go, why are you
going to? No, you go and tell him what I
I'm not going to tell him that you fancy him.
You can do your own dirty work. Anyway, eventually he does go
over to him and he says hello, my name is Mark.
And the guy goes, no, it's not. You're Peter Mandelson.
We were at Oxford together. They then chatted away for the
rest of the evening. But anyway, yes, my husband
said. All right, there are too many
Peter Mandelson stories. But have you, have you checked
with Lord Mandelson as he is now?
I have. He's OK.
Well, I checked the Bishop story.
There's quite a few bishops, Well, and for that matter, drag
Queens in the book as well. Quite a lot of drag Queens.
I used to love Julie Paid, who used to perform at Molly Moggs
and used to get on the bus with the mic while singing, I don't
know, a baccarat song or something like that.
Get Sorry, I Can boogie or yes Sir, I'm a Lady, Carry on
singing on the bus as it went up Tottenham Court Road.
There are Japanese tourists looking completely enough
bemused, let alone the people sitting on the bus.
I mean, so it's come back to sort of changing the world.
I mean, you've been in politics for a couple of decades now.
I mean, is the fact that you stayed in it an indicator that
you think you are succeeding? Succeeding.
I mean, there's, I think there are things that I'm really,
really proud of that I fought for over the years.
I, I think I'm probably, I was probably the first person in the
British Parliament who called out Putin long, long before
2014. And I was certainly the only
person in 2014 who said if, if we allow him to take Crimea, he
will come for the rest of Ukraine.
And I got condemned as a warmonger for it and all the
rest of it back in 2014. I'm proud of the campaign I've
run on acquired brain injury over the years, partly because
of people playing rugby in South Wales and the concussions that
they suffered at the time have led to early onset dementia and
cognitive problems and depression and anxiety and all
sorts of things. I'm proud of the fact that I was
the minister that took forward the abolition of trust
ammunitions. I'm proud of what we've the deal
we've just done for musicians from with the record labels.
So yes, there's there's stuff, but it's all for me.
It's about getting things done. It really is about getting
things done. It's great when we win elections
because then we can get things done.
When you're in opposition, all you can do is throw bridges,
throw bridges, throw snowballs at people standing on the
bridge. I mean, you talk about crying
with Frank Dobson losing the 92 election.
I was Frank Dobson's election agent in 19 Two and mostly
working actually on Glenda Jackson's campaign next door.
And that led to a whole load of other stories.
But, and yes, Frank was the shadow energy secretary, so he
would have been the Secretary of State for energy, I guess.
And we would probably have introduced the miners
compensation scheme in 1992 if we'd won.
And I was driving him around the day after the election with a,
you know, megaphone saying thank you for voting Labour.
And then we had to stop. And the both the two of us sat
crying for a good 15 or 20 minutes until a traffic warden
tapped on the car and said, you're in a double yellow line.
And I think that that instilled in me a sense that you had to
take the nation with you. You couldn't just presume that
you were going to win because the the other side were rubbish.
But I mean, in terms of, you know, the things that make you
cry with rage now, I mean, you know, the accomplishments you've
mentioned, I don't want to denigrate them in any way, but
they are not the central causes of either the Labour Party or
the OR the government, the old government, you know, the last
Labour government or this government.
I mean, you know, is, is the truth that, you know, being in
politics is a bit disappointing. No, completely not and.
You know that you don't change the world as you would like.
To oh, no, because you changed the world person by person, step
by step and, and, and lot lots of little things.
I mean, sometimes I get asked what is it similar being an, a
constituency MP to being a, a priest?
It's identical, absolutely identical.
I remember, you know, when I, when I was a priest, my first
visit to an elderly lady, the lady died with my hat and I was
holding her hand as she died. I was giving her communion a few
weeks ago, somebody came to my constituency surgery and he'd
made a terrible decision 14 years ago and everything else
following on had just been a series of places where there
wasn't a good decision available to him anymore.
And we've managed to sort it out for him.
I mean, that is just, that is just such a phenomenal privilege
to be able to be alongside somebody in that way as an MP.
And I, and it's the bit that we have uniquely in our system that
lots of other systems don't have.
I mean, you know, if I speak to a Spanish MP or a French MP,
they just don't have that part of their equation.
And I I adore that part of it. So when, when you hear the sort
of the, the rage of the electorate now you know that
sense well, you know you've got into power and you're making,
making a mess of it and you know you're not doing anything fast
enough and you're not changing Britain the way you promised you
would. I mean, do you understand that?
Do you feel as well? I, I feel all the impatience.
I mean, I'm a very impatient person.
You could argue many times that's been my undoing.
I, I've run at a gate far too fast and, and I feel all that
impatience myself. I want to get things done this
afternoon, not wait until next week.
And sometimes when you've got to wait for the grid to say yes,
you can announce this, you go. I mean, isn't it very, I mean,
you know, you're a minister, you're part of the, you're in
the team that you wanted to be in the team.
And that with that comes the responsibility of not
criticizing it, taking ministerial responsibility.
Isn't that really frustrating as well?
I mean, you know, but you can't shout about the thing that's
making you angry. Well, you can't shout publicly,
but you could. But but you also have the
privilege of being behind the scenes and being able to say,
right, what is the best version of what we can sort out here?
And, and I'm very proud. I, I, I am absolutely adoring
the work that I'm able to do at the moment, whether it's, you
know, highly technical stuff that I'm doing around telecoms
or space or whatever, or data for that matter.
Or it's, you know, trying to sort out British artists, being
able to tour around Europe and getting creative education for
every child in every school in the country, all that kind of
stuff. I mean, it is my passion and I'm
very excited about it and I feel free to be able to push the
boundaries of what is achievable.
But on the bigger picture, what do you say to people when they
confront you with their disappointment?
Well, AI understand the the frustration and the impatience I
I equally get frustrated when people want us to have transfer
transformed the world in 50 minutes when you know it takes
it takes a long time to run a country down and it takes a long
time to get it back on its feet. But it's.
Difficult, isn't it? Because people look at America
now and they go, well, look at Donald Trump.
He's only been in power a few months and he seems to be
changing things. Why?
Why don't you change things?
Not in the same way perhaps, but well, a, because I don't think
you would want to change them in the same way and take time.
Well, and. Secondly, we don't have a
presidential system and I and I guess there are some people who
would want us to have a presidential system.
I would wholeheartedly disagree. But you've got a massive
majority, so you can do whatever you want.
Well, no, you can't. And, and, and everything else
I've written about in the past is, you know, is, is about, I, I
do believe in the parliamentary system.
I believe that you have to, not least because it means you have
to be a team player. I always thought that one of the
problems with with Boris was that Boris Johnson would be a
great person, maybe in a, in a system, in a presidential
system, but it just doesn't work in a parliamentary system.
And that's why I think you have to trust in making sure that the
team works more effectively as a unit rather than just as
individuals. I mean, you're a Welsh MP and
people are people are suggesting that reform will win in Wales.
Do you do you think that's likely?
I know I look like Mystic Meg, but I'm not Mystic Meg and I'm
really I I've always thought Harriet Harman taught me
something years ago which she she said when you're an MP you
are not a commentator, you're a player.
So. But you see the threat.
Of course I see the threat and, and I and and I see the
monstrous misinformation and, and, and I, I, you know, we've
seen it many times. It's easy to build a grievance,
always easy to build a grievance in politics, 10 times more
difficult to be able to sort out a solution.
I mean, I, I, I watched your interview the other day with
Andrew Jenkins and I just thought, yeah, OK, so you,
you've spotted the problem and you know how to wind up the
grievance, but not you. But you, you haven't got an
answer. You haven't got an answer to a
single one of the things that you think is a problem.
So look, I mean, I, I think we are there to do 2 things as a
government. The first is we are there to put
right the things that have been broken.
The classic incidents I think is a prison system in the UK.
We just haven't got enough prisons for the prisoners that
we want to put in prison. So we should sort that and, and,
and the, and the previous government knew that they were
given endless advice to that effect and did nothing about it.
So that's the kind of thing where we've just got to put
things right, we've got to mend them and that will take time.
And then the second thing is we've already, we've got to make
sure that everybody gets a decent chance in life.
And I know from my constituency it says this more loudly perhaps
than any other in the country, that lots of people don't get a
decent chance in life. It's.
That's easier said than done, isn't it?
Oh, completely. Of course, because your.
Career is very interesting because you know, you span that
period of that you talk about of great sort of hope in the 90's,
the beginning of New Labour, you know, the, the Tony Blair
government and you know, and then opposition and then this.
And a lot of people thought this would be the same.
You just rerun the same plays, not as New Labour in the late
90s, and it'll all be fine. And it's turned out not to be
the case. It's completely different and
I'll tell you from. What?
So how has politics changed over that 20 year period?
Well, social media has fundamentally changed
everything. So you don't have, you know, 3
News programs everyday telling, giving you a curated version of
what is, is today's news. You have millions of people,
some of them with good intent and some with not good intent,
stirring the pot, getting their version of out there and so on.
And, and some elements of that I absolutely adore, but some of it
is, we know, profoundly scurrilous and deliberately
manufactured for effect. So.
So that's a much more difficult place to navigate.
Do you think your generation has worked out how to do politics in
this world? Now of course we haven't, I
mean, I think it's really tough and, and boy, I mean, I look at
the new intake of MPs. I think they're phenomenal.
I, I have not seen such a good intake of MPs as there is, I'm
not, I'm talking dominantly about Labour because that's what
I know. But I look at people in other
parties as well and there's some phenomenal MPs there and it can
be a very frustrating process being a backbench MPI spent most
of my time as an MP. I've been a backbencher, I've
relished it and I've enjoyed it. In that quote that I put to you
before you said the The sense that something just isn't fair
drives me crazy. An inexplicable rage boils up
inside me. Sometimes it's a furious refusal
to accept that something is happening.
What is it that's got you boiling right now?
Ukraine, I feel so angry. I mean, obviously predominantly
with Putin. And I feel very proud actually
of the role that Keir Starmer and other Western leaders have
played in making sure that we step up to the mark to make sure
that Ukraine isn't just abandoned.
This was so not only predictable, but predicted.
And that that makes me so angry. And, and I was on the Foreign
Affairs Committee. We went not, we went to Kiev 2
weeks before the 2nd invasion and we were advised not to go to
the to to the Donbass region. We said, well, we're here, we're
going. And every step of the way they
kept on saying you mustn't, you mustn't, you mustn't, you
mustn't. It isn't safe and say, well,
we're going. We went to Abdiv Abdivgah right
on the border with what, what was then the division line with
Russians. And we could see Russian snipers
pointing at at ours and at Ukrainian forces.
And I mean, we just knew this was going to happen.
And I feel still so angry that Russia lied and lied and lied
and lied and David Cameron and William Hague and Boris Johnson
completely surrendered Crimea to Russia and we failed and I don't
want us to fail again. I.
Thought you were going to say Gaza actually.
It's interesting that you you reach for Ukraine first.
Well, of course, I mean the, how can you watch either the events,
you know, the of, of, of the attack, the Hamas attack on
Israel or what's happened in the last 18 months and not feel
absolute fury and want to do something.
And how can you not feel guilt about not being able to do more
and, and what would more look like and how could you make more
happen, Of course, all the time, every single day, every time you
watch the news. How can you not feel that?
I suppose that's why you carry on.
Yes, because some, I, I was asked the other day, well, you
know, what have you ever achieved?
And I, you know, sometimes I list the small things, but of
course I'm also part of a much bigger team.
And then I, you know, in my time as a politician, we've managed
to get a minimum wage in place, we've managed to put legislation
in place which enables women, more women to be able to come
forward around rape. We've changed the law in so many
ways that I think has improved society.
We've introduced an Equality Act, all of these things that I
passionately believe in. And I think we are making a
better world that there's a hymn I always used to laugh at.
Nearer and nearer draws the time, the time that will surely
be when the earth should be filled with the glory of God and
the waters cover the sea. But it starts with that idea of,
of when on earth is everything going to change?
And, and I just, I just still hold on to that faith about
politics, which is nearer. Nearer draws the time, the time
that will surely be. Chris Bryant, Sir.
Chris, thank you very much indeed.
Always sounds like I'm a pantomime Dame.
Well, that's it for this episode of The Forecast.
Until next time, bye bye.