Our Politics newsletter is now daily. Join thousands of others and get the latest Scottish politics news sent straight to your inbox. Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

THE eccentric mayor of London wants to build a huge network of pipes to bring water from Scotland to the parched capital.

Boris Johnson unveiled the bizarre idea as southern England suffered the worst droughts for more than 30 years.

With rainfall in parts of Kent, Sussex and Oxfordshire comparable with arid Tunisia, experts are looking again at moving excess water from Scotland to England.

Scotland certainly has plenty of the stuff. The west had 89in of rain last year, while East Anglia had just 18in.

Johnson said the solution is not to encourage bath-sharing in Kent but to use the rain from the mountains to tackle water shortages in drier UK areas.

He said: “Since Scotland and Wales are on the whole higher up than England, it is surely time to do the obvious – use the principle of gravity to bring surplus rain from the mountains to irrigate and refresh the breadbasket of the country in the south and east.”

A network of underground pipes transporting millions of litres of water could be built to England. But the cost would be enormous.

It is estimated that taking water even from the north of England to London could cost £14million a day per million litres.

So pumping water across the border remains a pipe dream.