Much ridicule has been directed at reports that Boris Johnson is eyeing not just one tunnel to link Scotland and Northern Ireland, but another three, which would converge in a giant roundabout under the Isle of Man. Comparisons have been made to Hitler moving around imaginary armies in the last days of the Third Reich. Such scorn, though, contains a risk: that all drafts for Johnsonian infrastructure projects will be consigned to the cutting-room floor, just because the PM envisaged a few tunnels too far.
I happen to be a supporter – sometimes, it feels, rather a lone one – of national infrastructure projects. Their lacklustre reputation in the UK may be in part because we have so often been really bad at them (HS2 anyone? Crossrail?) but also because by habitually branding them ‘grands projets’, we treat them as alien accretions. Having lived in France, I have to ask: what is so wrong with the high-speed rail network, the Pompidou Centre, the fabulous (British-designed) bridge at Millau, and, yes, the now nearly 30-year-old Channel Tunnel?
Speaking of tunnels, Boris Johnson’s original proposal for a tunnel linking Northern Ireland to Mainland Britain must surely have some appeal.
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