Boris Johnson told journalist he ‘wished he was black’
BORIS JOHNSON’S former wife said that she “blocked out” memories of her ex-husband after a journalist told her he once said he “wished he was black”.
Afua Hirsch, a best-selling author who is of British-ghanaian heritage, said in an article for British Vogue he made “problematic remarks” about her at a party in 2008 attended by the former prime minister and Marina Wheeler, his wife at the time.
The claims are made by Ms Hirsch in an interview with Ms Wheeler, who suggested she may have “blocked” the comments from her memory. One of Britain’s foremost civil rights lawyers, Ms Wheeler, 59, married Mr Johnson in 1993. The couple split up in 2018 and finalised their divorce in 2020.
In the article, Ms Hirsch said: “I met Wheeler once before, in 2008, at a friend’s party the night Barack Obama was elected US president ... She was still married to Johnson, who was there with her, and who – true to form – made some problematic remarks about my own racial heritage. After demanding to know ‘where I was from’, he commented that he ‘wished he was black’.
“Marina says she remembers me, but not what her then-husband said, and groans when I tell her the story. ‘Good thing I blocked all of those things out,’ she says.”
Ms Hirsch was born in Norway to a British father and Ghanaian mother and raised in Wimbledon. She studied at Oxford and went on to qualify as a barrister before moving into journalism. She has previously accused Mr Johnson of making a “litany of racist statements” and claimed his “oafish stupidity” was part of his “electoral brand”.
Elsewhere in the interview, Ms Wheeler, who has four children with Mr Johnson, described the final years of her marriage as “impossible” and said she feels “free” after her divorce.
“I suppose I do feel that, as you become more senior as a woman, and, I guess, post-divorce, if I’m honest, it does free you up,” she said. You can look at the world again and do things that can make a difference.”
Since her ex-husband quit the Commons, she has joined forces with Labour as its “whistleblowing tsar”, assisting with the party’s plans to crack down on sexual harassment at work.
Mr Johnson declined to comment. The May issue of British Vogue is available via digital download and on newsstands from today.