The only thing I previously knew about Chris Bryant was that he once appeared on the gay dating website Gaydar in his underpants. Not a very fetching pair of underpants either: white Y-fronts that would not have been out of place in C&A circa 1972. Lithe, toned – he is a committed gym-goer and House of Commons swimming champion – but with a very dodgy taste in pants.
That was in 2003 and it's not a great thing to have on a Labour MP's CV. Google him now and about half the pictures you get are still that image. Yet here he is, seven years later, still lithe and toned and glowing with athleticism but in an immaculate suit and occupying a vast, polished, art-filled space in the Foreign Office as minister for Europe, eager to bang the drum for the EU and point out the uneasiness of the Conservative position. Bryant's advance suggests that we may finally be growing up a bit where sex and public life are concerned, and he will celebrate that fact a week tomorrow when he marries his partner Jared Cranney in what will be the first civil partnership ever held in the Houses of Parliament.
"When I was born, it was illegal to be gay in Britain and until the last 13 years progress was painfully slow," says Bryant. "Jared and I are really looking forward to getting married in Parliament, as so many straight couples have before us, because it's Parliament that has made it possible. Some people talk of 'broken Britain', but Britain is in many ways an infinitely better place than it was 13 years ago, when we didn't even have an equal age of consent. I saw Peter Tatchell's 1996 list of what had to be achieved by a Labour government – civil partnerships, gays in the military, adoption, equal age of consent – and every single one of them has been done. Civil partnerships are symbolic of the social change Labour has brought about."
How Bryant made it through the underpants debacle fascinates me, and after a tour d'horizon of the great European questions – Turkish accession, a joint army, whether the Tories will ever try to bring us out – I wheedle my way round to the subject. "I think of it now as a scar," he says. "It was a wound but it's a rather charming scar now. I had a period when I barely slept and it was horrible, but I'm very lucky in having a supportive set of friends – MP friends and others – and they looked after me."
At the time, the media predicted that he wouldn't survive, and there was much talk of deselection as MP for the rock-solid Labour seat of the Rhondda, but he says that was never likely. "That was just hyperbole [in the media], but it was pretty unpleasant. People were being doorstepped. You can't retaliate in any way; you're completely powerless. You just have to let it happen. It took a long time to stop because the pursuit of other people – exes and family members – by journalists went on for quite a while, and that's when you remember there's collateral damage to other people in your family." Do people still mention it? "Only David Cameron. He brought it up in the chamber," he says, referring to an oblique reference the Conservative leader made to him in the Commons in November last year.
It's fascinating that the Rhondda chose Bryant – gay, a former Anglican priest, and someone who had dallied with the Conservatives as a student – in the first place. Had he been surprised to be picked to fight the 2001 election? "I fell off the chair," he says, "and my opponents [for the nomination] certainly did. I had promised my then partner that I wouldn't get selected, but I did. He was very worried that I'd disappear into politics and he'd never see me again, and becoming an MP didn't do much for that relationship."
Fifty-two people applied for the candidature and a local councillor was hot favourite to win, but Bryant says hard work and knocking on the doors of every one of the constituency's 700 Labour members produced the unlikeliest of upsets. "Eight of us were put on the shortlist and there was a hustings. I did my 'I am what I am' moment, and got a standing ovation. I thought it was better to get selected on an honest basis."
'People in the Rhondda are pretty fair'
Bryant is a youthful 48, a keen rugby player as well as a swimmer, energetic, competitive, combative. I see him in action at the London School of Economics, answering tough questions about European policy, and he gives no quarter, relishing the cut and thrust of the debate that follows his lecture on the perils of euroscepticism. "The euroscepticism that is prevalent in parts of British society – and which has seized hold of the opposition like a severe bout of influenza – undermines the British interest at every turn," he tells his audience. "It's an act of false patriotism." He calls himself an internationalist, and traces the roots of that outlook back to his Welsh father's decision to take a computing job in Spain in the 1960s – an unusual move back then. His family lived in Bilbao and Madrid before returning to the UK, where Bryant read English at Oxford before going on to theological college and being ordained as a Church of England minister.
Had he always intended to be a priest? "No," he says, "but the years from 12 to 18 were quite tough at home because Mum drank and it wasn't very happy, and the people who were most supportive of me were Christians [his school, Cheltenham College, had an Anglican ethos]. It's not that they said 'Go and be a vicar', but I remember the first Sunday at Oxford I decided to go to church and it continued. There was a bit of me that felt I'd survived all of this with a degree of strength, and that wasn't because I was a wonderful person, so it should be something I shared with other people and put to the use of the wider community. Now I hear myself saying it, it sounds hideously patronising and glutinous."
'Chris, you know you're gay, don't you?'
Gradually he realised that being gay and being a priest were incompatible. "When I was ordained [in 1986], the view on homosexuality was 'Don't ask, don't tell', and, anyway, I wasn't really certain where I was going, but by 1991 I thought, hang on I'm gay, and the church had changed its position a bit – it had decided the Bible doesn't really like gays. There was a new document produced, and I remember the Bishop of Oxford saying, 'I've never laid hands on a gay man' a week after he'd ordained me. I thought there are battles I want to fight; this isn't a battle I want to fight all my life; I want to go and do something where I can be open and honest about myself and have a partner and all of that."
He left the priesthood – though remains what he calls a "heterodox" Christian, rejecting the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection but holding firm to the teachings of Jesus – for the uncertain world of politics. He worked for Labour MP Frank Dobson, was a councillor in Hackney, became chairman of the Christian Socialist Movement, wrote biographies of former Labour chancellor Stafford Cripps and actor-turned-politician Glenda Jackson, came remarkably close to winning Wycombe for Labour in 1997, and was the BBC's head of European affairs, lobbying on the corporation's behalf in Brussels, before landing one of the safest Labour seats in the country.
Bryant is frequently called ambitious, and his prominent role in trying to usurp Tony Blair in a party coup in September 2006 was attributed to his having been left on the backbenches, but he insists he has changed. "There was a time when I had an ambition that was all about rising to great office, and it made me a pretty odious member of the House of Commons," he says. "I was running at the gate like a madman. I just don't feel that anymore. There's both good ambition and bad ambition. There's ambition which is all about yourself, and that's been one of the difficulties of this last year in British politics. But there's also an ambition to achieve things and get things done, and I suppose the thread running through my life is that I've always wanted to change the world."
Bryant bridles when I mention his "career path". "That's the second time you've used the word 'career'," he says. "I've done so many things in my life that it's hard to see any career. I remember when I was in the church, when I was going for my first interview to see whether I was going to be ordained, one of the questions was 'Are you ambitious?', to which the correct answer was meant to be 'No'. I said, 'Yes'. The bishop looked askance at me, and I said: 'It's all right, it's just that I would quite like to play Doctor Who one day." Don't rule it out.