Sorry, Sadiq Khan, I won’t be calling it the ‘Lioness Line’

It takes a lot for London commuters to look up from their smartphones, but this morning Sadiq Khan elicited a collective tut and eye-roll.

During rush hour, the mayor announced that the six suburban train lines that make up the London Overground network are to be rebranded, with new colours to untangle the mass of orange currently messing up Harry Beck’s world-famous route map.

More controversially, for the first time, they’re each to be given an official name, to “celebrate the best of London”.

When those names were announced – ping! – on social media, the collective cringe in my carriage might have been felt in Watford, whose train link into the capital is henceforth to be coloured yellow and known as the Lioness line. Cue a mass dry heave.

The line between Gospel Oak and Barking – which has long been known colloquially as the “Goblin” (geddit?) – will now be referred to officially as the Suffragette line, say the fun sponges in charge at Transport for London.

The tiny, three-station line in east London, between Romford and Upminster, is now the Liberty line – presumably as in “please, I don’t want to go there and you can’t make me”.

I suspect the connections between the fleshpots of Dalston and Shoreditch in the north to south London idylls such as Clapham and Croydon will remain known to the hipsters who use them as the Ginger line, rather than “The Windrush”. Why? These trains don’t go anywhere near Tilbury Docks, where the first British Caribbeans landed in 1948.

For the full list of dismal names – and the travelling public’s nonplussed verdict – head to social media. For me, it was as if Ken Livingstone was back at City Hall. It’s all so GLC-tastic, a flashback to a more patrician time when Del Boy and Rodney Trotter were housed by a right-on, left-wing council on the 12th floor of Nelson Mandela House. (If Only Fools and Horses were filmed today, the block would be renamed in honour of Camila Batmanghelidjh.)

If “red” Khan’s naked virtue-signalling feels like yet another salvo in the culture war, that’s probably because it is. As the race for the London mayoralty reaches room temperature, he knows this is going to give Susan Hall, his feeble Tory opponent, and her supporters an aneurysm. He also knows that it is all of no consequence, as literally no passenger is ever going to use these new right-on names.

Khan has form on this front. When he moved City Hall out of the Glass Testicle – the Norman Foster-designed, purpose-built landmark next to the Tower of London – to a smoked-glass block somewhere in zone three, he approved changing its official address to “Kamal Chunchie Way”, in honour of the Sri Lankan race campaigner.

I’m all for bigging-up great London things, but these new train line names don’t just feel like a missed opportunity – they feel like £6m badly spent. They could have referenced nearby forgotten rivers or, through gritted teeth, famous historic locals. And what has been overlooked in all this is the Tube’s glorious and eminently utilitarian tradition for turning two stations into a fun portmanteau for a whole line.

The Bakerloo opened in 1906 as the Baker Street and Waterloo line before eventually being squished together. Before the Victoria line opened in 1968, there was a push to call it the Viking Line, a mash-up of Victoria and King’s Cross. Thameslink, the commuter train that connects Bedford and St Pancras, could have been the “BedPan”.

Ahead of the mayoral elections in May, I’ve been looking for reasons to give Sadiq Khan my vote after the supposedly “green” mayor contributed to the capital’s toxic air pollution by opening a £2bn road tunnel which he steadfastly refuses to defend in public. These new train line names haven’t helped my view of him.

Get cyclists off London’s pavements and turn the Circle line back into an actual circle, Mr Mayor – then I’ll consider putting a tick in your box.