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Virgin then released a statement, with accompanying photographs, showing that there were in fact quite a lot of seats avaliable on the train. And since then it has descended into the most pernickety farce in recent political history.Corbyn's people say that while there may have been seats available in the CCTV footage Virgin Trains have just released, they were being bag-blocked by the inconsiderate and waylaid. Blairite infiltators, probably. Virgin also point out that there were seats reserved but unclaimed. In his most recent statement on the issue, Corbyn said that he had spoken to the train driver who had specially arranged for two seats to become available. Both sides agree that by 11:40AM, almost an hour into his journey, Corbyn had been seated.Whatever the exact facts are, there has certainly been a little funny business going on. The floor was not the only option. There were places he could have sat. Even Jeremy admits there were single free seats that he turned down because he wanted to talk to his wife, and that the train driver offered to upgrade him to First Class.This sort of political truth-bending is bad for most, but it's much much worse if your key move is to set yourself up as a secular saint. The train video were his best piece of saint-porn yet: Corbyn sat in the gangway between carriages with a coffee and Private Eye, slumming it like us proles. What's more, it emerged only a few days after someone had taken a picture of Corbyn on a stuffed night bus, grimly hanging onto one of those plastic handrails, wearing the familiar expression of a man only one unscheduled Aldgate East detour away from spewing.
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