Boris Johnson has already drawn comparisons to Donald Trump in that both are coiffed conservative politicians who, according to poll numbers, appear to be in over their heads. Now, Johnson and Trump are further linked by their love of expensive and frivolous international public works projects that will likely never happen. At an Anglo-French summit on Thursday meant to discuss immigration issues and further navigate Brexit’s fallout, Johnson, the U.K.'s foreign secretary, floated the idea for a 22-mile bridge across the English Channel to connect Great Britain and France. Whether it was out of an abundance of politeness or a sincere belief that his technocratic wisdom could make even the most hare-brained public works project seem logical, the Telegraph reports that French President Emmanuel Macron said “I agree, let’s do it.”
So far, the reactions to an infrastructure project that could cost an estimated $166 billion have ranged from healthy skepticism to open mockery. A spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May, Boris’ boss, could only admit that there were “no specific plans” for such a bridge.
Business Insider ’s Adam Bienkov, whose job doesn’t require defending every Tory position, tweeted that “Johnson’s previous plans for public money have included an island airport in a bird strike zone, the most expensive footbridge in history (to be designed by Thomas Heatherwick), and a bus that was so hot inside it doubled up as a mobile sauna.” Architect Alan Dunlop quipped in the Times that it’d be more cost- and time-efficient to “just move France closer.” And the U.K. Chamber of Shipping responded to the proposal with a trademark dose of British understatement:
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Whether or not the bridge is ultimately built, it’s hard not to savor the delicious irony of one of Brexit’s biggest cheerleaders pushing for a literal link between the U.K. and a member nation of the European Union. It would ultimately seem that not even architecture is safe from Britain and the continent’s messy divorce.
