Stupid, vulgar, patronizing and uncool: Sadiq Khan’s new name for a London Underground line is bad enough.
What’s worse is what they mean.
The capital’s subway line has been the subject of bipartisan attention for decades, and its name derives from its geography and design. Northern, Central, District, Circle. Or royalty: Victoria and the recently opened Elizabeth.
That’s exactly right. Despite London’s public transport system becoming increasingly disrupted by strikes, delays and violence, everyone in London still uses it, and prices are rising rapidly.
So London Overground’s new name (which I’ve never had a problem navigating) is not only embarrassing, but shamelessly political. Khan was just as gloating yesterday, shouting on the TV news: “Not everyone will be happy!”
This man is irredeemable. He enjoys the rift he has created among Londoners. This brigadier general in the culture wars intends to pummel his enemies, those who don’t share his views, with a salvo of political correctness.
So there’s the Lionesses line, named after the England soccer team that fought to qualify for last year’s Women’s World Cup but lost in the final.
The women’s suffrage movement, no matter how noble its stated aim of giving women the right to vote, supports a group that included many terrorists and the saintly Emmeline Pankhurst among them. . (Before the outbreak of World War I, suffragettes waged a two-year bombing and arson campaign across Britain, killing four people and injuring at least 24.) Tensions were rising in their own cities. At the time, Khan may have had second thoughts. about it.
Naturally, there’s the Windrush line, named after London’s Caribbean-origin community. Windrush immigrants made a huge contribution to this country, but mass immigration is arguably the most pressing issue of our time, with opinion polls showing a clear majority of Britons want immigration reduced. This name ignores and even reprimands such concerns.
The Mildmay lineage is named after Shoreditch Hospital, which treated patients during the HIV/Aids crisis, while the Weaver lineage once again celebrates the “diverse immigrant community” who worked in the cloth trade.
The Liberty line refers to the “independent” borough of Havering, where the nanny mayor bans “junk food” advertising on public transport and wages a fanatical war against motorists, blaming them. It’s a bit of a stretch to argue about freedom when doing so. They oppose him as an “extreme right-winger.” There is a £15bn ‘black hole’ in Transport for London’s (TfL) finances, but Mr Khan found that it was spending £6.3m on this fake rubbish.
And what else would you expect from a man who, unlike his cycling predecessor Boris Johnson, eschews traveling in his own hoi polloi, preferring instead to fly around in armored vehicles? ?
I am surprised that there is no non-binary line, EU re-accession line, or perhaps a free pay line. TfL claims the new name reflects “London’s diverse history”. They do the opposite. They primarily pay homage to minorities, ignoring the mainstream of London life in the process. Why aren’t we lining up for the young Londoners who died for their country? Or for the longshoremen, road builders, firefighters and, for that matter, the mothers who have kept this city going for centuries?
Khan may have called one of its offshoots the Churchill Line, in honor of the man who led Britain to victory after the horrors of the Blitz. But no, he has no compromises.
Last year, for example, it was revealed that the Mayor’s official document ‘A City for All Londoners’ warned against using images of white families in PR campaigns. Because such people do not reflect the ‘real London’.
Or witness the mayor’s bizarre campaign to rename “problematic” streets. In 2020, in the wake of the heated George Floyd protests, he created a “Committee for Diversity in the Public Realm” to erase “old” addresses and replace them with City Hall-approved alternatives. Raised. Sure enough, Tottenham’s Blackboy Lane was renamed La Rose Lane in memory of a local black activist named John La Rose. Unfortunately, the man’s family called the move a “sham” and stressed that “he would have hated it.”
Or consider Khan’s takeover of New Year’s fireworks. This year’s themes included immigration, Windrush, same-sex marriage, the collapsing NHS and more…Change the record!
I am beginning to think that a woke dictatorship is increasingly inevitable, especially with Labor leading in the polls. Every aspect of life, even a simple train journey, is relentlessly politicized by elites who believe that the little people need re-education.
Emperor Khan is more comfortable promoting his ideology than solving the city’s escalating problems, from knife crime to anti-social behavior, declining high streets and transport delays.
This mini Nero has to go – and take his stupid stunts with him.
- Brendan O’Neill is Spike’s chief political writer