Virgin Trains, which runs the service as part of its East Coast franchise, thanked Corbyn for his praise of its staff and said more capacity was being introduced at peak times.
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However, Virgin has now released CCTV images from inside the train carriage showing Corbyn and his team walking past “empty, unreserved seats” in coach H before continuing through the rest of the train to the far end to film the stunt.
In a statement on Tuesday supported by Richard Branson, Virgin Trains said it wanted to “clarify” Mr Corbyn’s account of the journey on August 11th.
“Film footage released to the media showed Mr Corbyn sitting on the floor of a three-hour Virgin Trains service from London to Newcastle claiming it was “ram-packed”.
Footage from the train operator shows Mr Corbyn sitting down in an empty seat in coach H of the train at 11.43am.
In a statement, his campaign said that at the beginning of the journey Corbyn “was unable to find unreserved seats, so he sat with other passengers in the corridor who were also unable to find a seat”.
The clearest image shows Corbyn ignoring seats which had been reserved but were unclaimed – meaning he and his team were free to use them until told otherwise. The first scheduled stop of the 11am departure from London King’s Cross to Newcastle is York, at 12.50pm and well after the timestamp of the CCTV footage.
A Virgin Trains spokesperson said they would encourage Mr Corbyn to “book ahead” next time to reserve a seat – but they look forward to welcoming him on board again. Could there be a better case for taking the railways back into public ownership?
A former shadow minister has said that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn would face constructive dismissal, “probably with racial discrimination thrown in”, over his treatment of her and Bristol West MP Thangam Debbonaire. The staff are absolutely brilliant working really hard to help everybody.
Khan criticized Corbyn for being unfit for leadership, saying, “Jeremy has already proved that he is unable to organize an effective team and has failed to win the trust and respect of the British people”.
The row comes as Mr Corbyn vies to hold onto the Labour leadership against a challenge by Owen Smith.
“My only public comment on Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership before this contest was to say that he had lost the confidence of his parliamentary colleagues in Westminster”.
The spokesman also said they were looking into whether Virgin Trains breached Information Commissioner’s Office data protection guidelines by releasing the CCTV.
On Twitter, Mr Smith said his campaign remained “on track” and that he was “proud to be genuinely standing up for ordinary people”.
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Newsweek has contacted Corbyn’s campaign team for a response and will update this story if/when it is supplied.
