VID ON ‘OVERCROWDED’ TRAIN
Fair point about rip-off fares, but badly bungled...
trains, we need more of them – and they’re also incredibly expensive. Isn’t that a case for public ownership?”
Virgin said bosses checked CCTV after the clip went viral on the internet. The images released yesterday show Mr Corbyn and his team walking through a near-empty carriage of reserved seats.
They then pass through an unreserved carriage with some passengers but also what appear to be a number of empty seats. A Virgin spokesman said: “We’re a bit puzzled why Jeremy couldn’t find unreserved seats when he boarded the train – they’re right next to him.”
One passenger, Keren Harrison, 45, said she was chatting with Mr Corbyn when Virgin staff came over and offered to try to find him some seats.
She added: “I don’t know if they would have done it for any other passenger – and off they went before coming back and offering him a seat in first class. He declined them and I thought he was obviously a man of morals and doesn’t want to sit in first class.
“They then came up and said they had managed to find him some seats.”
But rebel Labour MPs accused Mr Corbyn of setting up a PR stunt at odds with his claim to offer only “straighttalking, honest politics”.
Ex-Shadow Culture Secretary Chris JEREMY Corbyn’s publicity stunt backfired as soon as he plonked his bum in the doorway of a Virgin East Coast train for the cameras, to highlight overcrowding.
CCTV footage showed the Labour leader walking past empty seats before sitting on the floor and this was more than embarrassing for Jezza.
It was an object lesson in political propaganda: When you take on somebody as sharp and hard-nosed as Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson, get your backside in gear.
Don’t hand him a golden opportunity to turn the tables on you.
I’ve travelled this route hundreds of times. At peak hours, most seats are booked, and it’s a chore finding somewhere. But you can sit in a booked seat if the passenger fails to show, and the conductor will often help.
Corbyn’s foolish feat has shown up his own ineptitude, not the profiteering disgrace of Britain’s privatised rail system.
His political credibility instantly became the story, not the rip-off fares that make UK rail travel the most expensive in Europe.
His lame little prepared speech about ticket prices and “ram-packed” trains (does he mean jam-packed?) has voters laughing at him, not cheering with him.
I can’t think of another Labour leader who would have made this naive mistake.
Bryant said: “Everybody has had to sit on the floor on a train at some point – but for Jeremy to go and pretend will get up people’s noses more than anything.
“I thought the whole point of Jeremy was that he doesn’t use spin. But this stunt could have been invented by [Tory spin chief ] Lynton Crosby.”
The row also caused a storm on Twitter. Labour-supporting Simply Red singer Mick Hucknall said: “Unsurprising.
Glib, simplistic propaganda tops the list of the Corbyn agenda. Devoid of real practical solutions.”
But fellow musician Alison Moyet wrote: “Corbyn sitting-on-train-floor photo may’ve been stage-managed, but every single commuter knows truth of modern train travel. It’s the reality.”
The controversy threatens to overshadow Mr Corbyn’s announcement today that he would end NHS privatisation as Prime Minister. This includes ending costly Private Finance Initiative contracts used by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to build new hospitals.
He will say in a speech: “The Tories have run our treasured National Health Service into the ground and we need to get serious about stopping them.
“The next Labour government would go further than reversing Tory cuts – it would deliver a modern health and social care service that is fully publicly provided and fully publicly funded.”