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Brexit Bulletin: The Boris Bridge over troubled water

 Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson with French President Emmanuel Macron and Laurent Fabius, prepare for a group photo during UK-France summit talks at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, in Camberley - Pool PA
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson with French President Emmanuel Macron and Laurent Fabius, prepare for a group photo during UK-France summit talks at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, in Camberley - Pool PA

Good afternoon.

As part of “l’entente chaleureuse” Theresa May feted last night, Boris Johnson aired the prospect of a bridge being built across the Channel. The Foreign Secretary thought it was “ridiculous” that Britain and France were only “linked by a single railway”. “I agree,” Emmanuel Macron told him. “Let’s do it”. Critics have been swift to deride Mr Johnson, with others airing their own alternative crossings, yet my colleague Mark Molloy has found the Boris Bridge may not be as outlandish as it might sound. It has been “seriously considered before and is entirely feasible”, a former president at the Institution of Structural Engineers tells him. The project would face many challenges, not least its minimum cost of £35 billion and that it would take around ten years to build, but one expert says the “real challenge” would be amassing the political support behind it.

Talk of bridges hasn’t calmed the troubled water over Brexit, with Monsieur Macron giving no ground on the terms of exit Britain could expect. If the British want access to the EU’s services market, he said they can “be me guest”, but they would have to pay. His stance is to be expected, but I warn online that it could backfire given the palpable fears among French officials about the impact of a ‘no deal’ Brexit.

Such an outcome would only be possible if the Prime Minister felt no option but to walk away. Judging by her warm words to French TV, in which she boasted of being a “European”, the Prime Minister is sticking it out. Yet Brexiteers may be exasperated by her struggle yet again to answer the question of how she’d vote in another EU referendum. Despite the furore she caused in her original answer to LBC’s Iain Dale, she gave essentially the same answer to France 2, that she would “look carefully at the issues” - tacitly conceding she could lean towards Remain. That isn’t a shock in itself, given she backed Remain in 2016. But as the Prime Minister carrying out Brexit, her answer risks renewing questions about why she has to be wary of committing herself to the project she is carrying out.

This is an extract from my afternoon Brexit Bulletin. To get it straight to your inbox, with much more featured, sign up below

 

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