BRENDAN O’NEILL: Khan’s new names for Overground strains are ludicrous

Ludicrous, crass, patronising and twee: Sadiq Khan‘s new names for London Overground strains are unhealthy sufficient.

Worse nonetheless is what they signify.

For a long time, the capital’s Tube strains have been scrupulously non-partisan, taking their names from geography and design: Northern, Central, District, Circle; or royalty: Victoria and the lately opened Elizabeth.

Rightly so. Everyone in London makes use of — and pays sharply rising prices for —the capital’s public transport, even when the community is more and more tormented by strikes, delays and violence.

So the brand new names for the London Overground (which I’ve by no means had issues navigating) usually are not solely embarrassing — they’re shamelessly political. Khan gloated as a lot yesterday, crowing on the TV information: ‘Not everybody’s going to be glad!’

The new names for the London Overground usually are not solely embarrassing — they’re shamelessly political

The man is irredeemable: revelling within the divisions he fosters between Londoners. This brigadier common within the tradition battle intends to pummel the enemy — that’s, anybody who does not share his view — with a fusillade of political correctness.

So, there’s the Lioness line, named after the England soccer squad who fought their approach to final yr’s girls’s World Cup however misplaced within the closing.

There’s the Suffragette line, cheering on a bunch that, nonetheless noble its acknowledged goal of feminine enfranchisement, contained many terrorists, the sainted Emmeline Pankhurst amongst them. (Until the outbreak of the First World War, the Suffragettes mounted a two-year bombing and arson marketing campaign throughout the UK that killed 4 and injured at the least 24.) At a time of rising tensions in his personal metropolis, Khan may need thought twice about that one.

Inevitably, there’s the Windrush line, named for London’s Caribbean-origin communities. The Windrush arrivals made a wonderful contribution to this nation — however mass immigration is unquestionably probably the most urgent concern of our time, with polling displaying {that a} clear majority of Britons wish to see it lowered. This title ignores, even rebukes, such considerations.

There’s the Mildmay line, after a Shoreditch hospital that handled sufferers in the course of the HIV/Aids disaster, whereas the Weaver line, but once more, hails ‘various migrant communities’ who labored within the fabric commerce.

The Liberty line refers back to the ‘impartial’ borough of Havering — however it is a bit wealthy of the nannying mayor to harp on about liberty when he banned ‘junk meals’ adverts on public transport, is waging a fanatical battle in opposition to drivers and denounces anybody who disagrees with him as ‘far-Right’. Transport for London (TfL) has a £15 billion ‘black gap’ in its funds, however Khan discovered £6.3 million for this posturing garbage.

Then once more, what else would you anticipate from a person who, in contrast to his biking predecessor Boris Johnson, eschews travelling with the hoi polloi himself, preferring as a substitute to flit about by armoured automotive?

I’m amazed there is not a Non-Binary line, a Rejoin-the-EU line or maybe a Free Pales-line. TfL claims the brand new names replicate ‘London’s various historical past’. They do the other. They principally pay tribute to minorities — and within the course of omit the mainstream of London life. Why no line for the younger males of London who died for his or her nation? Or for the dockers, road-layers, firefighters and, for that matter, moms who’ve saved this metropolis going for hundreds of years?

Khan may need known as one department the Churchill line, in honour of the person who led Britain to victory after the horrors of the Blitz. But no, compromise is beneath him.

Last yr, for instance, it was revealed that an official mayoral doc, A City For All Londoners, warned in opposition to utilizing pictures of white households in PR campaigns as a result of such folks don’t replicate ‘actual London’.

Or witness the mayor’s weird marketing campaign to alter ‘problematic’ road names. In 2020, within the wake of the frenzied George Floyd protests, he launched a Commission For Diversity In The Public Realm to erase ‘outdated’ addresses and exchange them with City Hall-approved options. Sure sufficient, Tottenham’s Black Boy Lane was rechristened La Rose Lane in reminiscence of a neighborhood black activist named John La Rose. What a disgrace the person’s household known as the transfer ‘tokenistic’ and careworn: ‘He would have hated it.’

Or take Khan’s hijacking of the New Year fireworks. Themes this yr included immigration, Windrush, homosexual marriage and the collapsing NHS… change the document, man!

I’m beginning to suppose — not least with Labour so forward within the polls — that the woke dictatorship is more and more inescapable. Every facet of life, even a easy prepare journey, is being ruthlessly politicised by an elite that believes the little folks should be re-educated.

Emperor Khan is extra comfy meting out ideology than fixing his metropolis’s escalating issues — from knife crime to anti-social behaviour, High Street decline, transport delays and the remainder.

This mini-Nero should go — and take his foolish stunts with him.

• Brendan O’Neill is Spiked journal’s Chief Political Writer