The Irish Sea Bridge is not the only example of the UK government being tempted to intervene unilaterally in devolved infrastructure plans.
The Report, however, does not follow its unionist logic consistently. As well as its poor connection to London, Swansea has no direct rail link to Bristol, surely a matter of Union Connectivity. Equally, the report backs a ‘Fast Growth Knowledge Corridor’ entirely within England. Though it cuts across the London-centric rail structure of England’s southeast, that line looks rather like a border between its fastest growing corner and the rest of the UK.
‘While not of strategic importance for cross-border connectivity’ the Analytical Report says the ‘Fast Growth Knowledge Corridor’ ‘is recognised as an increasingly important strategic corridor for the UK’. Compelling though its economic rationale may be, treating this Corridor across the southeast as an exceptional strategic priority, while leaving a large city like Swansea out in the cold is as hard to reconcile with the logic of levelling-up as that of Union Connectivity.
With existing plans set to compound historic underinvestment, it is easy to see why Boris Johnson’s infrastructure investments plans have received a hostile reception in Wales. The practical realism of Hendry’s Review put an end to the Prime Minister most extravagant peacock display of ‘muscular unionism’. Though the Union Connectivity Review has walked Boris Johnson away from some of his more bombastically abrasive suggestions, its general treatment of Wales is, at best, mixed. Ultimately, it illustrates a more general problem. Its own centre often has an impoverished vision of the Union, viewed through Home Counties goggles, which connects poorly with the rest of the UK.