Johnson’s ‘stupid’ tunnel from Scotland to NI ‘dead in water’ and nobody is surprised

In news that will probably only surprise the prime minister the tunnel from Northern Ireland to Scotland will not be built.

It will now be filed away with the Garden Bridge, Boris Island and water cannons that can never be used etc etc…

The prime minister had hoped to dig a £15 billion submarine link beneath the treacherous Irish Sea.

Back in March Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister described the transport link as a “smokescreen for the Brexit fallout”.

Michelle O’Neill dismissed it on Wednesday as a “pipe dream”.

With increasing anger among the unionist community about a so-called Irish Sea border with more checks on goods since Brexit was finalised, Ms O’Neill said the link with the UK is simply a “smokescreen for the Brexit fallout amongst the unionists who engineered it on both sides of the Irish Sea.”

Stormont transport minister Nichola Mallon also claimed the study is “politically motivated” and “more about bolstering the case for the Union ahead of the forthcoming Scottish elections”.

Ridiculed

Also in March, he even commissioned Network Rail’s chairman Sir Peter Hendy to look at a 31-mile fixed link, believing it would strengthen ties between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The idea for a tunnel came after experts ridiculed proposals for a bridge over the water.

But others pointed out a route beneath the sea could disturb an arms dump in the Beaufort Dyke, where an estimated 1.17 million tonnes of conventional and chemical weapons have been dropped.

The PM’s former chief adviser Dominic Cummings said in July: “The Prime Minister’s only agenda is to buy more trains, buy more buses, have more bikes and build the world’s most stupid tunnel to Ireland.”

 Holyrood’s Transport Secretary Michael Matheson also branded the prospect of a fixed crossing between the two nations as “nothing more than a vanity project” for Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

He told MSPs on the committee in March: “The bridge or tunnel is nothing more than a vanity project and I’ll say again, it won’t happen in my lifetime and I suspect it won’t happen in the lifetime of anyone in this committee.”

Reactions

1.

So I read that Boris Johnson’s planned bridge/tunnel between Scotland and Northern Ireland has been quietly cancelled.

That is a surprise

— RS Archer (@archer_rs) September 14, 2021

2.

#TradeDescriptionsAct

You can’t describe Boris Johnson’s tunnel as dead.

It was never alive. Fantasies don’t breathehttps://t.co/AIVWDyRND1

— Natalie Bennett (@natalieben) September 13, 2021

3.

Boris Johnson’s hairbrained tunnel scheme is over. It was so monumentally daft, even he couldn’t sustain enthusiasm for it. pic.twitter.com/aWfCPOdSKP

— Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡 (@uk_domain_names) September 14, 2021

4.

“Not only is the North Channel considered incredibly wild, the Beaufort’s Dyke underwater trench contains radioactive waste and an estimated one million tonnes of dumped munitions from the two World Wars.”

Let’s fund the NHS instead.https://t.co/9y30kvEzHj

— Leicester Worker (@LeicesterWorker) September 7, 2021

4.

Sad to think that a roundabout under the Isle of Man will now have to exist in conceptual form as a metaphor for intergovernmental relations in the British Isleshttps://t.co/3YZbdH41GO

— Adam Evans (@A_B_Evans) September 14, 2021

5.

Rishi has nixed Boris’s NI – Scotland tunnel which must be disappointing to companies that specialise in underwater bomb disposal given the 1 million tons of unused, still explosive munitions that were in the way https://t.co/ChyVZNgUMH pic.twitter.com/KVax8IW9Fy

— Rupert Myers (@RupertMyers) September 13, 2021

6.

meanwhile Boris Johnson’s plan to build “the world’s most stupid tunnel” linking Scotland and Northern Ireland — estimated to cost at least £15bn — has been described as “dead” by government officials

— Jim Pickard (@PickardJE) September 13, 2021

Related: Senior producers follow Neil out of the door as GB News adopts ‘increasingly populist agenda’