Bridging the gap

How Dover can learn from Detroit

The UK’S plan for a future trading relationship with the EU is looking increasingly similar to the Us-canada model.

The Ambassador’s Bridge between Detroit and Windsor could be a model for any future UK border at Dover, as both form a bottleneck where all goods must be checked.

The crossings from Windsordetroit and Dover-calais process a similar amount of road traffic – approximately four million per year.

Such a system may avoid snaking queues and overcrowded lorry parks in Calais and Dover after Brexit.

Britain and France would also be implementing the Canadian approach on a smaller scale, potentially making any technical or bureaucratic issues far easier to navigate.

On the Irish border question, however, things get much more complicated.

This 310-mile long crossing has no “bottleneck” – it is almost completely porous.

Any form of customs infrastructure on the border – even a camera or a security gate where a bar code can be scanned – is unacceptable to the Irish, who are pushing hard for the UK to remain in the customs union.

They are concerned that even minor pieces of infrastructure would be attacked or destroyed by dissident Irish republicans. This in turn could require the infrastructure to be guarded – at which point the guards risk being attacked.