No mention of the fantasy Irish Sea link in Johnson’s plan to link up the UK. Is he quietly ditching it already?

The BBC is reporting that a feasibility study is being made into Boris Johnson’s crackpot scheme of a bridge or tunnel over the Irish Sea (with ample space for customs clearing stations no doubt).  But intriguingly   the prime minister makes no mention of it in an article he’s written for the Daily Telegraph announcing a new UK wide  transport strategy “ to strengthen the very sinews of the UK.” Very odd that he makes no mention of his current pet fantasy. Almost certainly, this reflects the degree of support for it so far.  So is this Boris quietly backing off a certain loser before the DUP accuses him of betrayal again?  Johnson’s revised ideas seem eminently sensible as far as they go. But they show he hasn’t spotted yet the advantages even to himself of breathing new life into the British- Irish relationship. Otherwise he would be supporting north-south connectivity plans in the Irish government’s Shared Island project like a high speed upgrade for the Belfast to Dublin railway line.

“ For far too long, we have tended to carve up the country through a devolve and forget approach. We have devised transport strategies for Scotland, for Wales, for Northern Ireland and Northern England – and yet, incredible as it may seem, we have failed to produce a UK-wide transport strategy.

So together with Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, I have asked Sir Peter Hendy to address the problem of Union connectivity. He has just produced his interim report, before final conclusions in the summer.

We in the UK Government look forward to working with our partners and friends in the devolved administrations, to see if we can deliver this plan together – not to supplant their own agendas, but to supplement them for the benefit of all the people of the UK.

And there was one project that Sir Peter found to command overwhelming support; the A75 from Cairnryan in Scotland to the English border. It is a crucial route for south-west Scotland, for traffic between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and indeed the whole island of Ireland. This road connects three parts of the UK – Northern Ireland, Scotland and England. But it is a single carriageway. For 95 miles. This a long-term arteriosclerosis caused by our failure to think as one UK. As Sir Peter concludes his report, I hope he can produce the beginnings of a truly pan-UK transport strategy.

Take the A1 – still a single carriageway most of the way north of Newcastle and on into Scotland, in spite of decades of promises..  ook at the delays on the M4 as it goes west into South Wales. The Welsh Labour government managed to spend £144 million on a plan for relieving congestion (I kid you not) and then mystifyingly junked the scheme. The North Wales economy has amazing potential in aerospace and other sectors. But too little thought has been given to the links to Merseyside and Manchester, to the North Wales railway or the A55. It’s currently quicker to get a train from Cardiff to Paris than from Cardiff to Edinburgh, and why are we stopping HS2 in England? We don’t need a new line; with some bypasses, better track and signalling, as Sir Peter believes, we could run services from Glasgow to London in about 3 hours, and carry more freight too.