Theresa May has slapped down Boris Johnson’s calls for a 20 mile-long bridge across the English channel, with her spokesman saying the prime minister has no plans to build one. The foreign secretary on Thursday night floated the prospect of building a new link to the continent following a meeting with French president Emmanuel Macron.
The idea was immediately savaged by leading architects and shipping experts as impractical.
“Building a huge concrete structure in the middle of the world’s busiest shipping lane might come with some challenges,” the UK Chamber of Shipping tweeted.
“It’s (one of the) world’s busiest shipping lanes. Is that not enough? It would be easier, and less expensive to just move France closer,” Alan Dunlop, an architect and professor at the University of Liverpool, said.
Johnson floated the idea of the bridge across the Channel to enhance transport links with France after Brexit.
The foreign secretary discussed the issue with Emmanuel Macron, the French president, at the Anglo-French summit, saying it was “ridiculous” that two of the world’s biggest economies are linked by a single railway line.
Macron is understood to have responded positively with an agreement that a second link should be built. At the gathering at Sandhurst military college in Berkshire, Theresa May and Macron held talks alongside their senior ministers.
Macron has offered to loan Britain the Bayeux tapestry as a gesture of friendship, and suggested the UK and France were “making a new tapestry together” with their range of bilateral agreements across culture, security, art and trade.
Later, Johnson tweeted a picture of himself and Macron both giving a thumbs-up sign, captioned: “En marche! Great meetings with French counterparts today.”
He also tweeted: “I’m especially pleased we are establishing a panel of experts to look at major projects together. Our economic success depends on good infrastructure and good connections. Should the Channel Tunnel be just a first step?”
Johnson has previously promoted the idea of another Channel Tunnel but is now said to think a bridge could also be possible, telling aides that such feats of engineering have been achieved in Japan.
It was revealed last year in a book about the election, by Sunday Times political editor Tim Shipman, that Johnson was keen on a road tunnel linking Britain and France under the Channel to cement the countries’ relationship after Brexit. He was said to have abandoned the idea after being talked out of it by his former aide Will Walden.
Johnson has championed ambitious infrastructure projects in the past that have not come to fruition.