Downing Street announced plans for the bridge were now “underway by a range of Government officials”. The plans, which would see the United Kingdom linked by a bridge over the Irish Sea, have been called “bonkers” by some engineers.

Boris Johnson’s spokesman said: “The Prime Minister is ambitious in terms of infrastructure projects around the UK to boost connectivity.

“There is a proper piece of work being carried out into the idea.”

Ian Firth, a structural engineer and bridge designer, said there remain a “huge number of technical challenges” and the project is “right up there” with the toughest in the world.

Another engineer, who was behind London’s Millennium bridge, labelled it “bonkers”.

Where will it go?

The idea would be to link Northern Ireland and Scotland at their closest points.

This would mean a bridge running between Portpatrick in Scotland and Larne in Northern Ireland.

Experts have said that, while this might be technically possible, the route would be fraught with problems.

One major issue here would be the need to cross Beaufort’s Dyke, a deep trench used as a munitions dump after World War Two.

There is thought to be around one million tonnes of munitions lurking below the 26-mile stormy stretch of water.

Bridge builders would have to navigate and avoid this trench, the exact location of which is under doubt.

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How much will it cost?

When Mr Johnson first floated the idea in 2019, he told schoolchildren: “[I was talking yesterday] about building a bridge from Stranraer in Scotland to Larne in Northern Ireland – that would be very good. It would only cost about £15bn.”

However, this sum has been widely disputed.

Chris Wise, the engineering designer of the 2012 Olympic velodrome, said he supported the principle of connecting the two countries but raised a series of question marks over the practicality of the proposal.

He said: “It’s socially admirable but technically clueless.

“If Boris wants to stay Prime Minister he needs to stop promising figures before he can deliver them.”

He added: “If everything from the Olympics to HS2 are anything to go by, to quote the number and the price of any of these publicly funded projects this early without a design, in my view, is bonkers.

“You don’t know what something is going to cost until you know what you’re going to build. So unless Boris is sitting on a design that nobody else knows about, which he may be, I think it’s a bit foolhardy to put a price in the public domain.

“They always go up, they never go down. But it sounds cheap to me.”

Others were keen to point out Mr Johnson’s track record of ambitious projects during his time as London mayor.

Most notoriously, more than £40m was spent on the planned Garden Bridge in London, before it was finally abandoned by Sadiq Khan, his successor as the capital’s mayor.

How long would it take?

If the project received the go-ahead from engineers and found all the funding needed, it would still take a good few years.

Ian Firth, a structural engineer and bridge designer, said he believed design could be completed within three years.

Then, subject to gathering necessary data and no unforeseen issues, constructed within six.

However, he added that additional time would be needed for environmental and geotechnical studies, making a 15-year timeline more likely.

With the decades-long delay seen on the HS2 project, it’s not beyond reason to assume this could, too, face challenges.

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