Branson also tweeted to his 8.2 million followers a third image of Corbyn walking through a crowded carriage, timed at 11.11am, where the seats were clearly marked with reservation tickets. The Virgin entrepreneur wrote: “Mr Corbyn & team walked past empty-unreserved seats then filmed claim train was ‘ram-packed’”.
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Yannis Mendez, who filmed the original video – he has been following Corbyn and volunteers for his leadership campaign against Owen Smith – added that some of the seemingly empty seats shown in the first Virgin Trains image had bags and coats on them, so were not free.
The Corbyn team’s account was supported by a woman who said she sat on the floor next to the Labour leader, having sent a social media photo of herself and her daughter with him.
Ellen – who asked to not be named in full– told the Guardian that Corbyn had seemingly gone through the entire standard-class section of the train but had not been able to find a seat. The 26-year-old, who was with her one-year-old daughter and son, aged six, said she had similarly been unable to find seats.
“He’s not lying,” she said. “When I saw him he was in coach A, right at the front. He hadn’t managed to find a seat in the whole of the train. I was sat on the floor, there was no space for me to get a seat. There were people in every space between every carriage. It was totally overcrowded. They were full of bags and full of people.”
Another woman, Keren Harrison, tweeted a photo of herself with Corbyn on the train, saying there was only a seat for him about 45 minutes into the three-hour trip “when staff started shuffling people around”. This process appeared to involve Virgin staff directing other passengers sitting in corridors to reserved seats which had not been occupied
