Boris Johnson is certainly not offended by saying that he would love to leave a building that will go down in history. He already had plans for a new airport on the Thames while he was Mayor of London, and as British Foreign Secretary he brought a bridge over the English Channel into play. As is well known, neither of these came to be. Now that Johnson rules as Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street, another project is about to end: the Boris Bridge.
Boris Bridge, as the Yellow Press called Johnson’s plan to build a bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland. But now he reported Daily Telegraphthat Johnson has to give up on that dream. An investigative commission commissioned by him came to the conclusion that such a project would be too expensive and technically too demanding. “That doesn’t mean it won’t be doable sometime in the future, but it would be very, very difficult right now,” the newspaper quoted an anonymous government source as saying.
A bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland would not have been just any bridge, but a structure symbolizing the cohesion of the United Kingdom. The idea in itself is definitely to be welcomed, since the unity of the Union has become more and more fragile since Brexit. It is not known whether Johnson really believed in being able to use a bridge to curb the independence movements in Scotland and on the Irish island. The only thing that is certain is that in September the prime minister described the project as an “ambitious goal”, although it did not have “the highest priority”. It can be assumed that by then he already knew what the result of the feasibility study would be.
Johnson’s ex-advisor called his boss’s idea the “stupidest tunnel in the world”
According to telegraph there are several technical problems with the project. For one thing, the Irish Sea is very deep, so it would be extremely difficult to secure bridge piers to the seabed. On the other hand, the area was used as an offshore ammunition storage facility during World War II. And then there’s the weather. Because of the strong storms that sweep across the Irish Sea, the 45-kilometer bridge would have had to be closed several times.
In the investigation commissioned by Johnson, a tunnel for cars or trains was therefore also examined, although Johnson’s former chief advisor Dominic Cummings once called the idea the “stupidest tunnel in the world”. Now this idea has also been discarded: technically hard to do – and much too expensive in general.
Johnson had first discussed a transport link between Scotland and Northern Ireland three years ago. And since then again and again. The UK Treasury Department was skeptical from the start. The costs of several billion pounds are very difficult to estimate, it was said behind closed doors. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer presented the report on the planned expenditure for the next three years in October, Johnson’s idea did not emerge.