Boris Johnson suggests building a 22.2 mile bridge across the English Channel

Transport links between Britain and France would benefit from a road bridge across the English Channel, the Foreign Secretary has said.

Boris Johnson has suggested a 22.2 mile bridge should be constructed across the English Channel.

French President Emmanuel Macron is understood to be in favour of the idea. When the idea was suggested Macron is believed to have replied “I agree – let’s do it, “a source is quoted as saying in The Times.

He is in the UK visiting Theresa May to rebuild some altogether different Brexit bridges, his first such trip as President.

Johnson told Macron that it is “ridiculous” the two countries are only linked by a single railway line and proposed his bridge, a concept that the former London Mayor used to use as a joke.

The world’s longest bridge is China’s Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge, a 102.4 mile long stretch of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway.

But size doesn’t matter.

The more pressing issue is that the Channel is the world’s busiest shipping lane, specifically at its narrowest point, the Dover Strait, (where you’d probably want to build the hypothetical bridge.)

Architect, and professor at the University of Liverpool, Alan Dunlop quipped in a manner unbecoming someone of his profession “It would be easier, and less expensive to just move France closer.”

How Boris would reconcile that with the take back control crowd remains to be seen.

Last year Sunday Times Political Editor Tim Shipman revealed in his book Fall Out that Johnson had discussed building a road tunnel under the channel but was talked out of it by his aide Will Walden.

Of course it would be unfair not to mention Boris’ attempted Garden Bridge, a mayoral jolly that cost £37m but was never built. As well as ‘Boris Island,’ an airport built in the Thames estuary that Johnson advocated. It was ignored as a costly and impractical alternative to extending Heathrow.

The UK Chamber of Shipping said: “Building a huge concrete structure in the middle of the world’s busiest shipping lane might come with some challenges.”

Ian Ritchie, Royal Academician and architect, said: “Boris Bridge? He’s pissed away more than £46 million on his first bridge balls-up, so I think he should not propose putting his impoverished thinking into advancing a new ‘bridge building’ foreign policy. Keep the buffoon away from the environment and the Channel and leave the fish alone.”