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. [...]
Today, the most likely risk is a colossal waste of public money. Given the proponents of the bridges, the signs are not encouraging. Boris Johnson’s tenure as Mayor of London was most notable for a series of expensive follies, from the Boris Bus and the ArcelorMittal Orbit to the Garden Bridge and the equally ephemeral Boris Island. Meanwhile, previous pronouncements by Sammy Wilson have been less “blue sky thinking” and more ominous thunderclouds on the horizon, once commending an Ulster Defense Association (UDA) plan for ethnic cleansing in Northern Ireland as a “very valuable return to reality.” [...]
The second problem is more concerning. In dealing so much in vague speculative projects without adequate planning or consultation, there is a risk of leading politicians losing touch with reality. A hundred years of dystopian literature and films have provided humanity a healthy skepticism towards those promising utopian futures. Conservatives are not immune from this tendency. Whether it’s the result of naivety or cynicism, they too can believe in fictional golden ages, in pasts that never really existed or in long-lost positions of glory that can be recovered. The resurgence of a British imperial mentality during and after the Brexit vote marks a worrying departure from objectivity, whether it’s looking outwards with unrealistic visions of replacing trade with Europe with that of the Commonwealth, or an inflated self-regard that can be traced to an alarming increase in xenophobic attacks.
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