Cheating Boris in new bid to be PM
SHAMELESS Boris Johnson is set to step up his plot to oust Theresa May despite being exposed as a serial love cheat.
The British ex-foreign Secretary is braced for further revelations about his private life with three women linked to him by Westminster insiders.
Boris and wife Marina Wheeler, with whom he has four children, yesterday announced they are divorcing after 25 years in a move dubbed “Borexit” by Twitter wags.
Their marriage, which had survived his previous flings, finally ended after respected barrister Ms Wheeler accused him of cheating again.
Daughter Lara, 25, a fashion journalist, is reported to have said her mother “will never take him back”.
Two of the women, who have never previously been linked to Mr Johnson, have worked for Theresa May.
The third worked for David Cameron, her predecessor at No10. But Mr Johnson is understood to have told friends he has no intention of retreating from his bid to topple the Prime Minister over Brexit.
One Tory MP told the Mirror the developments could wreck his leadership chances, adding: “If he challenges Theresa May now, it could finish him.”
But others suggested Mr Johnson was in the process of a “damage limitation exercise” and wanted to “clear the decks” so his affairs could not be used against him in any future leadership contest.
A second Tory MP described it as “shovelling the s**t out of the way for the leadership bid”.
Mr Johnson is ploughing ahead with plans to address a 1,000-strong rally of fellow eurosceptics on the fringes of the Tory conference in Birmingham from the end of the month.
It threatens to overshadow Mrs May’s efforts to rally activists behind her Chequers plan for Brexit – which Boris slated as a disaster in his regular column in the Daily Telegraph this week. A third Tory MP said of the divorce: “I believe it is in Boris’s interests to get this news out now so it is not used by his enemies in the height of a leadership contest.”
But family friends disputed this, saying the couple had been preparing to make the announcement. Mr Johnson and Ms Wheeler, both 54, issued a joint statement yesterday after reports they were no longer living together.
In it they said their separation occurred “several months ago”.
It is understood to have taken place while he was living as Foreign Secretary in his grace-and-favour apartment in Central London.
The Mirror told how Mr
Johnson refused to move out of the €22million property despite quitting his Cabinet role in July in protest at the Mrs May’s Chequers plan for future relations with the EU. He eventually left three weeks later.
Claims about Boris’s affairs first emerged in 2004 when, as editor of The Spectator, he was said to have been hiding a four-year romance with columnist Petronella Wyatt, 50. Her mother claimed Petronella had become pregnant and had an abortion.
In 2006 it was reported he had been romancing journalist Anna Fazackerley. And in 2009 Mr Johnson fathered a child with arts consultant Helen Macintyre, who applied for a High Court injunction to prevent the child’s paternity being disclosed. Mr Johnson was a childhood friend of Ms Wheeler when they were pupils at the European School in Brussels.
They wed in 1993, the year he divorced first wife Allegra Mostyn-owen after six years.