Caroline Wheeler

Caroline Wheeler is Political Editor of The Sunday Times. She has broken numerous agenda-setting stories during the coronavirus pandemic, including Boris Johnson’s plans to cancel Christmas and introduce tougher lockdown restrictions over the festive season in 2020, and Leicester becoming the first UK city to go into a local lockdown. Other exclusives include exposing Operation Yellowhammer, the government’s secret contingency plan for a hard Brexit and the revelation that Theresa May would opt for a snap general election in 2017, a decision that would ultimately wipe out her parliamentary majority.

Caroline has been a parliamentary reporter for 17 years. She boasts an insider’s knowledge of government and Whitehall and has impeccable contacts with senior politicians, leading business figures and civil servants.

But she has not forgotten her investigative roots. Caroline has covered the NHS contaminated blood scandal for two decades since she was a reporter on the Sunday Mercury in Birmingham. She has been credited with the decision by May to launch a public inquiry into the worst treatment disaster in NHS history. In 2020, she also triggered a National Crime Agency (NCA) investigation after exposing details of how textile workers in Leicester making clothes destined for the fast fashion giant Boohoo were being paid as little as £3.50 an hour. The allegations of modern slavery led Boohoo’s share to plummet by 23% within a week, wiping £1bn from the value of the company.

Caroline is a frequent political commentator for the BBC and Sky and has also appeared as a guest analyst on the BBC Andrew Marr show and Westminster Hour, on BBC Radio 4.