Boris Johnson's ex-wife urges Britain to ‘put right what went wrong' with Brexit

Telegraph

28-05-2025

Boris Johnson's ex-wife has urged Britain to embrace the European Union and 'put right what went wrong' in his Brexit deal.
Marina Wheeler KC, a human rights lawyer, is writing a new book arguing for a closer relationship between Britain and Brussels.
The book, announced on Wednesday, will demand a 'more radical' approach than Sir Keir Starmer's 'reset' and an admission that 'Europe is once again central to Britain's future'.
It comes days Mr Johnson branded Sir Keir the 'orange ball-chewing manacled gimp of Brussels' over his EU deal, which gave European fishermen 12-year access to British fishing waters and reinstated the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice over the UK on some matters.
Ms Wheeler's book, which will be published in October, will instead argue that Britain should 'build a union' with the EU again.
Her publisher said it would compare the Brexit agreement negotiated by her ex-husband to a marital separation, arguing: 'Like a court order in a divorce, the Brexit deal contains our bare legal obligations.
'Yet as dangerous forces gather and global technologies stoke animosity, we have a wider duty. If Britain and Europe can't work together, what chance do democracy and the rule of law have?'
The book is titled A More Perfect Union: The Europe We Need and was acquired by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Ms Wheeler said: 'Nearly 10 years after Britain voted to leave the EU, the unstable state of the world is clear to us all.
'Less obvious is the extraordinary opportunity this presents to put right what went wrong before and build a Europe we can together defend.'
Ms Wheeler is a successful human rights barrister who took silk in 2016, and specialises in 'detention, mental health and national security issues', according to the website of her chambers, 1 Crown Office Row.
She married Mr Johnson in 1993 and remained with him until 2018. They have four children.
The couple reached a divorce settlement in early 2020, shortly before Mr Johnson's third marriage, to Carrie Symonds, who by that time lived with him in a flat above Downing Street.
On Saturday, Mr and Mrs Johnson announced the birth of their fourth child, Poppy.
Ms Wheeler revealed in 2021 that she had ended the marriage with Mr Johnson, telling Good Housekeeping: 'My 25-year marriage had become impossible, so I ended it, but the whole business was grim.'
She was diagnosed with cervical cancer in early 2019, while their separation proceedings were ongoing. She has since recovered.
Her new book follows the publication of The Lost Homestead, a biography of her Sikh mother at the time of the partition of India in 1947.
The blurb of her latest book says: 'Labour aims for a 'reset'. Barrister and mediator Marina Wheeler proposes something more radical: a roadmap towards a meaningful rapprochement.
'In A More Perfect Union, she tackles the political anxieties and identity crises on both sides of the Channel, and makes the case that transforming this relationship is now critical if our fundamental political liberties are to survive another generation.
'Concise, forensic, devastating, it is essential reading no matter which side you were on.'