Mr Corbyn made the journey on August 11th, and shot a video of himself sitting on the floor of the carriage, complaining the train was too full for him to get a seat.
Advertisement
“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”, Virgin said.
A video then emerged which showed Mr Corbyn sitting on the floor, reading a newspaper, and saying “this is a problem that many passengers face every day”, before calling for public ownership of the railways.
He said the Virgin footage of Mr Corbyn sitting in a seat was from after the Labour leader had filmed his video message on the floor, once the packed train had emptied out.
Responding to Virgin Trains’ claims that seats were available, a Corbyn campaign spokesman said: “When Jeremy boarded the train he was unable to find unreserved seats, so he sat with other passengers in the corridor who were also unable to find a seat”.
But Branson, the billionaire behind Virgin Group, tweeted images on Tuesday from a train security camera of Corbyn walking past available seats.
He hit out at comments made by Jeremy Corbyn on the morning of the European Union referendum result calling for Article 50 to be invoked immediately.
Conveniently, Mr Corbyn’s seemingly uncomfortable journey to Newcastle to attend a hustings with Owen Smith, his rival, afforded the Labour leader a golden opportunity to reprise one of his themes – the renationalisation of the railways. The staff on the train are absolutely brilliant, working really hard to help everybody.
It also shows staff helping Corbyn to seats he used for the rest of the journey after. There were too few trains and as a result they were “ram-packed and incredibly expensive”.
On whether Mr Corbyn walked past seats that appeared to be unreserved, the spokesman said there were coats and bags on them which indicated people were sat there. “Proud to be genuinely standing up for ordinary people”.
Advertisement
Virgin released CCTV footage showing rows of empty seats and said it took issue with his version of events.
