Boris Johnson's ex-wife Marina Wheeler is going to work for the Labour Party

Boris Johnson’s ex-wife Marina Wheeler is to take a job in the Labour Party, overseeing policy around whistleblowing.

Wheeler, who is a leading barrister and KC, will be Labour’s new “whistleblowing tsar”, offering advice and overseeing decisions on policy surrounding harassment in the workplace.

She is the second high-profile woman who is not from party politics to join Keir Starmer’s operation after former civil servant Sue Gray took a job as his chief of staff.

Gray wrote the report into lockdown parties in Downing Street while Johnson was Prime Minister.

Wheeler, meanwhile, was married to the former PM for 25 years, splitting from him a year before he became Prime Minister, making her appointment something of a coup for Starmer and co.

She told The Independent it was a "privilege" to help Labour protect women and was "delighted" to be working with Shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry on the issue.

She said women "too often suffer sexual harassment and assault and they pay a heavy price for speaking out", adding: "Knowing this, and to keep their jobs, they suffer in silence".

Thornberry will set out plans for Labour’s approach to whistleblowing in the workplace in her speech on Tuesday to the party’s annual conference.

She will say: “That is the difference between a Tory government that pretends to care about women’s rights and a Labour Party that delivers them.”

Whistleblowers are currently protected from unfairly losing their job, but the law only applies to certain scenarios like potential miscarriages of justice or criminal wrongdoing.

Government guidance warns: “Personal grievances (for example bullying, harassment, discrimination) are not covered by whistleblowing law unless your particular case is in the public interest.”

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