Corbyn derailed over his ‘no seat on train’ protest
LABOUR leader Jeremy Corbyn faced ridicule after his claim to have been unable to find a seat on a “ram-packed” train was disputed yesterday.
Mr Corbyn made a video protest on August 11 when he said that a Virgin train taking him to a rally in the North-east was completely full.
Filmed sitting on the floor, he claimed that overcrowding was a reason to back his hardline socialist agenda of renationalising the railways.
But CCTV footage released yesterday by Virgin Trains of the incident showed not only Mr Corbyn walking by empty seats but also sitting down in one after making his protest statement.
Shunted
A spokesman for Virgin Trains said: “We have to take issue with the idea that Mr Corbyn wasn’t able to be seated on the service, as this clearly wasn’t the case.”
Sir Richard Branson, who co-owns the train operator with Stagecoach, posted a link to the CCTV images on his Twitter account.
The link to the footage shows the Labour leader and his team getting on the train at 11am and passing empty seats. At 11.29am Mr Corbyn is filmed while sitting on the floor. Speaking to the camera, he says: “Today this train is completely rampacked.”
But having completed his stunt, the CCTV footage shows him going to coach H, which he had previously walked through, to take a seat at 11.43am before the train had even reached its first stop.
He remained there for more than two hours before he got off at Newcastle to attend a Labour leadership hustings in Gateshead with Owen Smith.
Former shadow cabinet minister Chris Bryant said: “I think the wheels just came off Jeremy’s campaign – he’s about to be shunted into a siding.”
Last night Keren Harrison posted a photograph claiming to show her with Mr Corbyn on the train and tweeted: “Fact: he got seat abt 45mins in when staff started shuffling ppl around! #traingate.”
Mark Wallace of ConservativeHome said: “This presumably means the ‘man of the people’ had passengers moved so he could sit next to his staff. Not sure this is a good idea.”