Former foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and his wife, Marina Wheeler, have announced that they are to seek a divorce.
“Several months ago, after 25 years of marriage, we decided it was in our best interests to separate,” they said.
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“We have subsequently agreed to divorce and that process is under way.”
Johnson and Wheeler, a barrister, have four adult children, whom they said they will continue to support together “as friends”.
The statement added that they would “not be commenting further” on the circumstances of their split.
However, The Sun reports that Wheeler called time on the marriage after discovering that Johnson had once again had an affair.
The newspaper, which broke the news of the split, says that the couple’s daughter Lara, 25, was overheard telling friends that her father was a “selfish b*****d” and claiming that her mother “will never take him back now”.
The pair’s marriage has repeatedly been strained by Johnson’s well-documented history of infidelity.
Wheeler “has thrown Boris out on two previous occasions”, the Daily Mirror reports, over at least two confirmed affairs, including an extramarital fling in 2009 that resulted in a love child.
In 2004, Johnson was sacked from then-Conservative leader Michael Howard’s shadow cabinet for lying about a four-year affair with journalist Petronella Wyatt - “something he had denied as an ‘inverted pyramid of piffle’”, says the BBC.
The Daily Telegraph says that the former foreign secretary’s indiscretions may once again have harmed his political career.
“If Mr Johnson succeeds Mrs May as Tory leader and prime minister, he would become the first divorced party leader to live in 10 Downing Street in modern times,” the newspaper notes.