All aboard the £6m Suffragette line

Sadiq Khan's Transport for London paid a branding agency more than £115,000 to explore 'decolonisation and queer histories' over five months of 'naming research' before it unveiled the revamp of the London Overground lines.

The Lioness, Mildmay, Windrush, Weaver, Suffragette and Liberty lines were revealed by the Labour Mayor, who hailed the 'brilliant' names that will save passengers from 'nightmare' journeys.

A Freedom of Information request reveals that TfL paid £115,275 to DNCO, 'an agency that we are using that specialises in creative community engagement'.

The firm said that it 'explored themes of decolonisation, queer histories, intersectionality and young London's perspectives' to decide the names of the lines.

TfL said that DNCO's expertise 'means that we can effectively engage with communities ahead of making any decisions on the names of lines and that the firm's research would 'inform the shortlisting of the names'.

This comes as the mayor defended his £6.3million project to rename and recolour all six Overground rail lines, but admitted: 'Not everybody is going to be happy.' The changes will be paid for out of Mr Khan's Greater London Authority budget.

The majority of this will go towards updating customer information such as redesigning and redisplaying maps across all Tube and London Overground stations, and issuing new versions in print and online.

Each route will be represented on Tube maps as parallel lines in different colours - which will require one of the biggest changes in the history of the famous diagram.

Public address announcements will be re-recorded and around 6,000 station direction signs will be updated. The rebranding will be rolled out over a week in the autumn.

This update of course is just more virtue signalling nonsense from Khan, who is standing for re-election on May 2nd!