Rachel Sabiha Johnson (born 3 September 1965) is a British journalist, television presenter, and author who has appeared frequently on political discussion panels, including The Pledge on Sky News[1] and BBC One's debate programme, Question Time.

[4] On her father's side, Johnson is a great-granddaughter of Ali Kemal, a liberal Circassian-Turkish journalist and the interior minister in the government of Damat Ferid Pasha, Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, who was murdered during the Turkish War of Independence in 1922.

[6] On her mother's side she is a granddaughter of Sir James Fawcett, a prominent barrister and president of the European Commission of Human Rights.

[9] In 1984 she spent three months as a kibbutz volunteer[10] and then went to New College, Oxford, to read Classics (Literae Humaniores);[11] there she edited the student paper Isis.

[16][14] She sits on the boards of Bright Blue, the modernising Tory think-tank, and Intelligence Squared, the international debate forum.

[24] Johnson then considered becoming a Lib Dem candidate in a seat in the West Country, but was barred under the party's rules, having been a member for less than a year.

[26] She later lamented this decision, describing herself as the "rat that jumped onto a sinking ship" and criticised the party leadership's focus-group attitude to decision-making structure and added that Change UK was a "terrible" name.