Boris Johnson ‘said he wished he was Black’ on night Obama became president

Boris Johnson said he “wished he was black” on the night Barack Obama was elected as US president, a journalist has claimed.

Afua Hirsch, of British-Ghanian heritage, claimed Mr Johnson demanded to know where she was from at a drinks party on the night of Obama’s victory in 2008.

In an interview with Mr Johnson’s ex-wife Marina Wheeler, the journalist wrote: “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’,” Ms Hirsch wrote in Vogue magazine.

Ms Hirsch said his ex-wife couldn’t remember the interaction, but “groaned” when told about it.

Ms Wheeler, 59, said her divorce from Mr Johnson, which was finalised in 2020 after separating in 2018, did “free” her.

“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.”

She married Mr Johnson in 1993. In October, barrister Ms Wheeler was appointed Labour’s new “whistleblowing tsar” to oversee plans to improve protections and employment rights for women against workplace harassment, abuse and sexual assault.

Ms Hirsch, a best-selling author, was born in Norway to a British father and Ghanaian mother and raised in Wimbledon. She studied PPE at Oxford and qualified as a barrister before moving into journalism, working for both The Guardian and Sky News.

She has previously accused Mr Johnson of making a “litany of racist statements” and claimed his “oafish stupidity” was part of his “electoral brand”.

Previously, Mr Johnson has admitted to writing “terrible things” about climate change when he was a journalist and that he was a “massive sceptic”.

He also said that during his time as mayor of London and prime minister, he thought “it was possible” that climate change was “a load of nonsense,” but decided to get behind it.