A Brexit Bridge Too Far

Faced with pressing social and economic concerns, proponents of the United Kingdom’s separation from the European Union have taken solace in “magical thinking,” in the words of E.U. negotiators in Brussels. Britain’s Brexit-supporting Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has gone as far as to suggest it would be only slightly more inconvenient than the London congestion charge, comparing it to crossing from Camden to Islington, and ignoring the Ireland border’s heavily contentious presence at the heart of a conflict which cost thousands of lives and impacted countless more. The infamous Vote Leave campaign claim, “We send the E.U. £350 million a week: let's fund our NHS instead” was eventually passed off as sales puff after the Brexit vote turned out in their favor. One former Tory minister, the Remain-supporting Anna Soubry, deemed such Brexit advocates as “ideologically driven unicorn-chasers.”

Delusions are often encouraged rather than cured by impending doom. And the tendency for otherwise conservative figures to suddenly believe in grand, expensive, almost utopian schemes has made its way into infrastructure. Why it has done so is more revealing than the details of the plans themselves.