Will colourful Sir Chris Bryant shake up Stormont as NI secretary?

He's been an Anglican priest, an esteemed author, the first MP to have a same-sex civil partnership ceremony in Westminster and now Sir Chris Bryant adds to his already colourful CV the job of Northern Ireland secretary.

When asked on Tuesday by the BBC how he had got the job, he jokingly replied that he had no idea and admitted the task ahead was "daunting".

But how will he fare in the job and what will he bring to it? To assess that, let's first go back in time a bit.

Sir Chris, 64, was born in Cardiff and joined the Labour Party in 1986 while he was studying to become a priest.

By 1991, he left the ordained ministry after deciding that being gay was incompatible with being a priest.

A quick scour of his LinkedIn profile shows some of the jobs he had before becoming an MP - among them working as head of European Affairs for the BBC from 1998 until he was elected as MP for Rhondda, in South Wales, three years later.

He was briefly a Europe minister in the Brown government and held a number of junior minister roles when Labour returned to power under Sir Keir Starmer in 2024, most recently in the Department for Business and Trade.

Speaking to the BBC's Political Thinking in 2021, he joked he had "careered from career to career" before finding politics and sticking at it.

While it appears to have served him well in return, Andy Burnham's decision to give him the Northern Ireland portfolio is the first time Bryant has actually held a cabinet job.

That may partially account for Bryant's use of the word "daunting" to describe his new role, but he also knows how tricky a tightrope he will be walking in this brief.

More often than not those who have gone before him have failed to impress and tripped up over the unique nature of our politics (Google Karen Bradley's time in Belfast and you will see what I mean).

Already some in Westminster circles have begun comparing his personality to the late Mo Mowlam - Labour's no-nonsense Northern Ireland secretary during the talks leading to the Good Friday Agreement, whose reputation for straight talking was matched only by her sharp one-liners in the media.

Kitty Donaldson, chief political commentator at The i Paper, said he could be a "sarcastic" character but also a very "positive" person who is comfortable sharing his personal life with the public.

Sir Chris has spoken many times about growing up with an alcoholic mother and several years ago revealed he had been diagnosed with skin cancer - in 2025 he said he was now in remission from the disease after several bouts of treatment.

"He sees injustice as the big campaign structure of his life, and I think he'll be a breath of fresh air. Hilary Benn was a lovely bloke but by no means as combative as Chris Bryant so I think you're in for some fun," said Donaldson.

"He wears his heart on his sleeve. That is refreshing, what you see is what you get. People who have been acerbic and put their cards on the table, people like Mo Mowlam have done quite well in Northern Irish politics as people there do appreciate honesty."

But this is not 1998 and the challenges Northern Ireland faces now are different in many ways to the ones Mowlam had to deal with.

One Stormont source remarked that Bryant would probably "fall out with everybody", pointing to the reputation he has developed during his 25 years as an MP.

Another MP described him as "surprisingly sincere" and reckoned he might just have the right skillset for Northern Ireland and "not tolerating the same old failing" approach.

But he may have bridges to build with some in the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), who may not have forgotten that back in 2017 Sir Chris was among LGBT Labour MPs who came out against the confidence and supply deal between the DUP and Theresa May's Conservative government, due to the DUP's opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion.

During those turbulent years of Brexit negotiations, Sir Chris also loudly displayed his pro-EU credentials, at one point saying in a Commons speech that Brexit would not be done in his name, adding: "Never, never, never."

Of course Brexit did happen and he is now in a government dealing with the outworkings of those arrangements, a point not lost on the Traditional Unionist Voice leader Jim Allister who took to social media with his verdict.

"As an EU fanatic I'd have little expectation of Chris Bryant standing up for NI against EU colonialism in this part of the UK," he said.

To the surprise of many, Sir Chris replied a short time later: "Jim, I look forward to working with you for a strong Northern Ireland in a strong United Kingdom."

He, like the prime minister, wants to talk about putting money into people's pockets and power back into communities, not calling border polls.

But as the person with the power now to call a referendum on Irish unity it is a stance he will face scrutiny on, not least from Stormont's nationalist parties who insist that a change of name plate in the Northern Ireland Office is meaningless unless policy changes too.

But for Sir Chris the first challenges have to be sorting out Stormont's finances and working a way through long-delayed legislation addressing Troubles legacy issues.

In his first interview since taking up the job, he quoted from the US actress and singer Bette Midler as he outlined what his approach would be.

"In the words of Bette Midler, you've got to give a little, take a little, let your poor heart break a little, and that is the process of negotiation, isn't it?" he said.

But if we are using song lyrics as political metaphors, Midler also sang a song called "You Don't Own Me", and he will surely find our executive parties prepared to push back if they don't like what they hear from him.

The Northern Ireland Office (NIO) is also going to get a shake-up when he lands in Belfast for his first visit next week.

As political commentator and former NIO special adviser Peter Cardwell put it, Bryant's predecessor Hilary Benn was a "civil servant's dream, and a journalist's nightmare".

The new man in the NIO is certainly a dramatic departure from that, but will he be the one to get Labour's unfinished business in Northern Ireland done?