BORIS’S BURROW
PM ‘BACKS TUNNEL UNDER IRISH SEA’... BUT BACKBENCHER POURS SCORN ON PLAN
A ROAD and rail tunnel under the sea to Northern Ireland could be set in motion by Boris Johnson’s government as early as next month.
Plans for the crossing – dubbed Boris’s Burrow – have been submitted by a group of railway-building firms after the PM ordered a review.
He is said to ‘enthusiastically’ back the link from Stranraer, south-west Scotland, to Larne, which at about 25 miles would be slightly shorter than the Channel Tunnel. Mr Johnson – who as London mayor backed the failed London Garden Bridge and built a cable car over the Thames – previously mooted a bridge to Northern Ireland.
A tunnel is deemed more practical and could help ease tensions caused by the Brexit border arrangements set out in the Northern Ireland protocol.
But backbench Tory MP Simon Hoare, chair of the Northern Ireland affairs select committee, ridiculed the plan.
‘The trains could be pulled by an inexhaustible herd of unicorns overseen by stern, officious dodos,’ he tweeted.
‘A pushme-pullyou could be the senior guard and Puff The Magic Dragon the inspector. Let’s concentrate on making the protocol work and put the hallucinogenics down’. Sir Peter Hendy, who is leading the review, is expected to say the project is possible. That could lead to a formal feasibility study being launched by the government in March, The Sunday Telegraph reported.
Scotland secretary Alister Jack, who backs the idea, said he thought the PM now preferred a tunnel. He said a bridge would often have to shut due to bad weather, while tons of wartime munitions dumped in a trench in the Irish Sea would hamper construction.
A tunnel could cost £10billion and take ten years to build, a firm of Scottish architects estimated last year.