The Guardian took the 11am London-Newcastle train the Labour leader says lacked free seats. Follow the updates on our trip, people’s reactions – and whether we got a seat
5.30pm BST
So what have we learned from today? Well, I didn’t struggle to get a seat on the 11am train from London’s King’s Cross to Newcastle, but that doesn’t disprove Jeremy Corbyn’s experience, and it doesn’t mean that the UK’s rail system does not lack capacity.
It is well known that there are sections of the network with capacity problems – it is one of the stated reasons for building HS2 – and no one regularly using Southern rail at the moment can be happy with the service they are getting.
4.53pm BST
Now, I could live blog the journey back to London. But I think that might be too exciting for you all. Here are some of the things you’ve been saying in the comments in the last hour
The point he was making (overcrowded trains) was valid. He could have chosen just about any London commuter train and won the case, but for some reason he chose an obviously not packed out train and the argument is lost. This is his problem or more likely his advisors they are not detailed enough to make and win a clear political argument.
The country needs a strong opposition to the Tory's not well meaning a amateurs that can't even arrange a political stunt.
Im a NYer and From my vantage point ,it sure looks like the UK media is closing the dumb it down gap with the USA. It also appears that the media is steering narratives rather than reporting. Can someone explain to this novice how a politician that bring s in hundreds of thousands of new members is the problem and the people who lost the voters are the solution?
He should learn to drive and experience the world like a massive majority of British people do. The horrendous costs (inflated by taxes), poor roads and traffic jams. Any chance of Corbyn finding out what the M25 is like? Zero. His idea of a road policy is cycle lanes.
He wants to choose the issues he has petty obsessions about (like giving back the railways to his union chums) but ignore the most important parts of transport that contribute to the demand for trains. And he has nothing to say on the fact that we will now be leaving the EU's transport framwork and regulatory regime. In fact, he is a total waste of space.
This event is a perfect example of why Corbyn has to go, I back nationalising the railways and I back clause 4 but done in a modern way, the problem we now have is these things are associated with Corbyn, and as such anyone attempting to actually bring them into force in the future will instantly be compared to him, the blokes a liability and he will make sure that none of Labours traditional policies will ever be heard of again.
He is slowly but surely killing off socialism in this country, especially when his little band of trusty followers refresh all of the things the public hated about the 70's and 80's, constant meaningless protests, harrassing anyone that opposes them etc.
4.44pm BST
My colleague Jessica Elgot writes that Jeremy Corbyn is not the first leader to find train travel leaves plenty of opportunities for blunders. Remember George Osborne being rumbled after sneaking into first class? Or Jeremy Hunt confusing the emergency cord with the flush in a Virgin train toilet?
You can read her piece on Thick of It-style gaffes here:
Related: Political trainwrecks: from Corbyn v Virgin to Cameron’s pasty sham
4.31pm BST
I am reliably informed via social media that the two Adams that I met on the train earlier are definitely called Adam, and are well known as Adam Blampied and Adam Pacitti from WhatCulture who cover wrestling. I have to confess, I sat down next to them because I hadn’t spoken to enough younger people on the train yet, and they were one of the few pairs of younger people who didn’t have headphones on, which always makes for an awkward start to an interview.
4.09pm BST
We aren’t on the train anymore, but Tolpatsch say they are making the journey in the other direction right now.
Air con broken in one coach on the 15:00 Newcastle Kings Cross as we speak.
Plenty of "empty seats" but every single one I can see is reserved.
3.44pm BST
So, if you are just joining us, I got the 11am train this morning from Kings Cross to York in order to ask people on it what they thought about #Traingate, Jeremy Corbyn, Virgin Trains, and the idea of renationalising our railways. We picked that because it was the same train that Corbyn got when he made the sitting on the floor video that Virgin are disputing.
I arrived at York around 1pm, and since then I’ve been reading your comments below the line, on Twitter and via GuardianWitness, and trying to reflect how people feel about the story in the live blog. Here’s a selection of recent comments:
Clearly there are times when the trains are "ram-packed". I bet Friday evenings are pretty bada because you have the mix of weekly commuters and weekend travellers all wanting to travel at the same time.
Not sure that a nationalised service was ever better at the really busy times.
My wife and I moved to Edinburgh in 2014, just before East Coast was taken over by VTEC. We travel frequently to London, and are able to get the best deals by booking well in advance, and using our 16-25 railcards (we're PhD students so still in full time education).
However, the cheapest ticket prices for Edinburgh to London have gone up by two thirds since 2014. We used to be able to find single tickets for £15.85 each way, no problem. Now we are lucky to grab a ticket for £25, which are the cheapest that VTEC now offer. Even booking well in advance we are normally paying around £35 each. The service has NOT improved (it was perfectly fine in 2014!) and many of the onboard facilities have been scaled back, such as the availability of decent food in the buffet car.
Regularly get on Virgin Trains on the old East Coast line and they are always very full, often people standing because the reservations system has broken. I have to buy tickets 3 months in advance to be able to afford them and, even in my well paying job, often resort to using the coach instead.
The thing I hate the most about Virgin Trains, though, is that their air con system runs through their toilets and so the coaches regularly smell of someone's fresh deposit. Only in the UK, where we've become so accustomed to appaling train service, can this be considered par for the course.
The reason why this is a big issue is that Mr "I dont do fake", " I dont play politics" , has done a fake story for political purposes.
This live blog is an absolute joke.
When there are wars going on, arms being sold, election fraud, brexit.
3.32pm BST
Here’s what happened at Jeremy Corbyn’s press conference earlier today when he was asked about the train row
3.27pm BST
In the comments, ACJB disputes what Zoë said about her boyfriend’s train experience earlier:
As someone who often (2-4 times/month) travels up to Edinburgh from KingsX on the 18:30 or 19:00 on Fridays I really don’t recognise this, at all. The 18:00 and 18:05 on Fridays are hell on wheels, but the later trains are fine. And if your boy knows when he is coming up in advance, surely he’ll be booking seats and super advance tickets (cheaper than the £135 off-peak return fare)? But walk up during peak on a Friday on the ECML is obviously going to be busy ...
3.23pm BST
That’s us told
Chairgate seems to confirm that nearly everyone in the UK has gone completely mad. Are you people serious over there? First the Brexit vote and now this. I know about your appalling newspapers but you presumably have heard that there are wars in the Middle East, a refugee crisis and a rapidly approaching climate change disaster to deal with haven't you? Give us a break.
3.09pm BST
I didn’t think to do this...
Went up from York to Edinburgh on a Virgin East Coast Train today.
When I boarded a smiled for the CCTV just in case Branson was watching
3.06pm BST
Huge thanks for your interest in this live blog, by the way. Obviously travelling to York on the 11am train today was never going to settle the truth about what happened on Jeremy Corbyn’s original trip, but it has been great to get over 3,000 comments talking about the state of UK railways and Corbyn’s policy about it.
A selection of comments to give you the feel of discussion below the line...
My guess is that with re-nationalisation, Corbyn had in mind the quality of the state-run French and German railways and not the crummy BR. I think people forget though the relative low price of tickets under BR. When Virgin got the franchise, the costs for the Manchester-London route went up massively.
Surely this is yet another case of Corbyn missing an open goal. If he really wanted to highlight the problems on the trains, why didn't he or one of his associates to use Southern's Brighton to London line. They'd be lucky to find somewhere to sit on the floor!
The very worst thing about #traingate is that this is mostly Labour ripping apart Labour. I do think Corbyn is on weak ground and it does look like he sat on the floor principally to make a point, when he could clearly have sat. Reserved seats are only reserved between certain stations and not if the reservee fails to show, just as Corbyn's own seats on an earlier train would be valid for someone else to have sat in. So, clearly, Corbyn has used this to (clumsily) make a point about our railways. Arguably, right argument, wrong way to go about it.
All said, personally, I'm not a great fan of Corbyn, but I can respect his mandate. If he is so bad, why not let his tenure run its natural course? The Tories had IDS, Hague, Howard...now it is Labour's turn.
I am disillusioned with Jeremy Corbyn, but the attempts to discredit him are a disgrace. He has a very good point about the utter shitness of train services in the UK. This is the real story here. I guess that it serves the establishment better to focus on whether or not traingate was spin, rather than confront this awkward reality & do something about it. Last week my Liverpool to Euston service had ONE working lavatory, the queue of people waiting to use it, including a heavily pregnant woman, was appalling. Seat availability and price hikes are phenomena that need to be addressed.
2.45pm BST
This is from Zoë White via GuardianWitness, who thinks trains are astronomically expensive, and the picture isn’t as rosy as train operators would like to make out.
My boyfriend lives in London and travels every second Friday up to Scotland via Virgin East Coast to visit me. Although I never have a problem travelling TO London, 9 times out of 10 his journeys are on trains crammed full of passengers sitting on the floor of the isles and in vestibules so much so that if you do get a seat you can't get out of it for any reason during the journey. Trains from London definitely have an overcrowding issue - this doesn't apply to all days of the week or all routes but it's something that shouldn't be ignored by Virgin particularly when train travel is astronomically expensive and there's no deduction is price for overbooked trains. It's not right to charge people £135 to sit on the floor for a few hours. I 100% believe Jeremy Corbyn couldn't get a seat that day.
Sent via GuardianWitness
By Zoë White
24 August 2016, 13:08
2.41pm BST
This comment from FridayWaits poses a good question about who has handled the situation worse...
So in short Virgin have -
a. Potentially broken data protection law
b. Shone a huge light on their shoddy service
c. Aggravated hundreds of thousands of very vocal Corbyn supporters that by demographic tend to be very active on social media.
2.27pm BST
Alex Howard has sent this about being a frequent traveller on the same route via our Guardian Witness assignment on this topic. Please feel free to contribute.
I've lived in Leeds and York for the last three years but have family in the south, so I've been a frequent user of this service and can confirm that it's often pretty bad. If you're travelling in the middle of the day, in the week, and have pre-booked then it's usually fine, but lots of people aren't able to do all of those things. I've also been on this service mid-day during school holidays and had to sit on the floor (a very tired-looking woman with a child was sat in my reserved seat and I couldn't bring myself to tell her that her ticket was for a different train). Air conditioning has often been broken, no power to carriages for plug sockets, and I've been on services so disrupted that seat reservations have been discarded completely and it becomes a free-for-all. But this is all pretty standard stuff for train services across the country, I don't think it's anything special about Virgin Trains.
Sent via GuardianWitness
By AlexHoward
24 August 2016, 12:57
2.18pm BST
Worth noting from the comments below this open question: “Any word on here about Virgin being open to prosecution with their hastily cobbled together CCTV footage being a breach of the Data Protection Act?”
Yes, there is.
2.09pm BST
If you are reading this live blog, it suggests you probably have strong opinions about #Traingate. Or maybe about live blogs. YouGov are currently carrying out a survey asking people what they think about the train story. Don’t tell them we sent you.
1.58pm BST
ID0993227 makes a very good point about whether Corbyn could have reserved the cheapest seats in advance for that day. Referring to Linda who I spoke to earlier, they say:
“The lady on the train said she reserves her seats 12 weeks in advance. Corbyn was going to the leadership hustings in Gateshead, which he couldn’t have known about 12 weeks in advance - no one could have.”
1.54pm BST
On rail privatisation, in the comments Fergus Patterson makes this point:
Network Rail is already “state owned” and much of the farce of rail travel is due to the poor condition of the rail infrastructure. What is needed is greater regulation of the TOC’s with rules on investment, proper control of ticketing etc.... the LAST thing we need is a return to British Rail and the lamentable service we endured pre-privatisation. If the DoT can’t invest properly in the points, signals, tracks etc... why would they be any better at investing in the rolling stock?
1.32pm BST
Of course, the important thing isn’t really about seeing whether I got a seat today, or trying to unpick the timestamps on the CCTV pictures that Virgin released to try and pin down the exact timeline of Jeremy Corbyn’s journey. The important thing is to use that as an opportunity to see how we manage train services in the UK.
TUC research shows ticket price rises are far outstripping pay rises, and commuters are understandably disgruntled with the service they receive. One regular on part of the route I took today messaged me earlier. Joanne Wagstaffe says: “I pay £7,992 for an annual season ticket. We moved to Peterborough to buy a house, as London is too expensive. I have to book my seat 3 months in advance. Sometimes there are no seats available. Sometimes they are double booked. If there is a cancellation of the train 20 mins before mine in the morning, then it is chaos.”
1.30pm BST
Here are two contributions on GuardianWitness:
I am a regular user of the Newcastle to King's Cross service - as a Geordie based in London and now Cambridge I have been taking this train regularly for the past 8 years.
Often, because of work demands I can only book an open-return for these journeys. I very regularly fail to get a seat on this service, have seen families taking turns sitting in the only seat available to them - often with children placed on laps for the 3 hour journey. There are regular mishaps with the reservations, such as seats not being labelled as reserved when they have indeed been reserved.
Sent via GuardianWitness
By Jonathan Wilson
24 August 2016, 12:12
Regardless of whether Corbyn should have sat in a reserved seat or not; as a frequent train traveller, it seems to me the point has been lost in the attempts to discredit him. Trains in the UK are a disgrace and not being able to find a seat IS a very common occurrence for a lot of people. With prices inflated as much as they are, surely that's the story and not Corbyn?
Sent via GuardianWitness
By Lembo59
24 August 2016, 11:35
1.25pm BST
Huge thanks to Fran Lawther who has been in charge of updating the live blog while I was filing via my phone during the journey. I was pleasantly surprised to find I had signal for most of the way. I’ve now got myself a place with wifi near the station - and I’ll be picking up some of the points you’ve made BTL and via Guardian Witness.
1.15pm BST
We’ve arrived in York, which is looking absolutely gorgeous in the sunshine. The train was on time and there were plenty of seats – even with the number of journalists onboard pestering people for their opinions about UK rail.
1.10pm BST
I’ve spoken to Sef who feels the service on the east coast mainline has deteriorated rapidly.
There seems to be this dogma that everything that is privatised has to work better. Well, it works better for the shareholders.
1.07pm BST
Owen Smith is not the only Labour MP to have weighed into the party leader’s transport row.
I wonder how Jeremy will spin his way out of this one. #traingate
Good spot! https://t.co/aMKcwaDkbL
I don't care about #traingate tbh. If you think JC campaign don't spin you are kidding yourselves. Straight talking honest politics is a lie
Perhaps It was the Hogwarts Express. And all the children were wearing invisibility cloaks.
Reminds of JC denying he'd called for #Article50 invocation but had. Virgin challenges Jeremy Corbyn train footagehttps://t.co/uwB5xoenYg
With @jeremycorbyn & fantastic #nhs activists Dr Rishi and Nurse Danielle. At UCLU launching Jeremy's Health Policy. pic.twitter.com/hFMefihdcV
Labour's Shadow Health Secretary @HackneyAbbott and @jeremycorbyn pledge to renationalise the NHS. https://t.co/C3l98kCt5j
1.00pm BST
My colleague Damien Gayle has more on Virgin potentially being in hot water with the information commissioner:
Virgin Trains faces an investigation by the data protection watchdog after releasing footage of the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, looking for seats on its London to Newcastle service.
12.45pm BST
We’ve just gone through Doncaster and I got momentarily disorientated because the Unipart rail depot has a London Overground carriage in being worked on. It’s the kind of thing you probably wouldn’t see under Corbyn’s railway policy.
His pledge is to take the railways back into state ownership and deliver a better and cheaper service. Launching the policy last month, he said:
Public ownership of our railways is needed now to fix the transport nightmare we are currently faced with, and we know there is overwhelming support among the British public for a people’s railway. It is only by bringing the railways back under public ownership as the contracts expire that we will fix the rail crisis.
12.42pm BST
I’ve spoken to one member of the crew, who, perhaps understandably, was a little bit reluctant to go on the record. “You’ve seen what this train is like. It’s like this every day,” they said. The inference is clear. I really haven’t had any trouble finding a seat at all.
12.39pm BST
Heather Stewart and Damien Gayle have this take on the latest developments in the Corbyn-Virgin row:
Jeremy Corbyn has reacted angrily after being repeatedly asked about his public row with Virgin Trains over his account of sitting on the floor of a “ram-packed” service – and reminded the company’s boss, Richard Branson, of his policy to renationalise the railways.
Related: Angry Jeremy Corbyn reminds Branson of rail nationalisation plans
12.27pm BST
Adam and Adam, who were possibly winding me up about both being called Adam, are in coach B.
They use this route once every couple of weeks, because they live in London but work for a company that has an office in Newcastle. One of the Adams describes himself as a Labour supporter who likes Jeremy Corbyn. He’s definitely in favour of nationalisation. He says he’s worried that the press have drummed into people that Corbyn is unelectable, and that this has been really damaging to the Labour party.
12.19pm BST
I’ve just had a quick look at your below the line comments on my phone – over 700 already. I can’t really reply to them all on my phone but in general from what I’ve seen, I agree, it’s obviously not a way to find out the truth of what happened on the exact journey that Corbyn made but:
I live in Leeds. Some years ago I worked in Huddersfield 20 odd miles away. I didn’t need a car at work so wanted to use the train. I used a local station that was the last stop on the line from York to Leeds. I then needed to change trains at Leeds. Frequently the train into Leeds was so full that I was unable to get on because the areas around the doors were full of passengers standing. It used to infuriate me that people would not move down the train so I and others could get on but the basis of the problem was no seats. Too frequently this caused me problems in terms of arriving at work on time and I reverted to driving. Train travel seems to me to be very expensive yet often overcrowded, uncomfortable and inefficient. France is a far bigger country with a similar population. My experience of using trains in France, a much bigger country, suggests they can run a far more effective better quality and cheaper service. Why is this?
12.12pm BST
I just spoke to David who described himself as a Labour voter. He has some strong views on the train incident – describing it as “opportunist”. He says with all the money going into the Labour party it shows incompetence that the leader’s team couldn’t book two seats together in advance. He says before privatisation trains were overcrowded, dirty and unreliable and he wouldn’t want to go back to that.
12.05pm BST
The Guardian’s Peter Walker has tweeted his take on Traingate.
Before I try to forget about the whole sorry farrago forever, here's what I believe is most plausible set of facts on #traingate (1)
Firstly: it seems there were some free, unreserved seats which JC could have sat on. He & his team said there were no double seats left (2)
... and he wanted to sit with wife. My guess is they went down carriages seeking double seats, and spare seats filled up soon after (3)
JC was not only person who found it hard to find seats. There's strong evidence of others sitting in corridors. Virgin do not dispute it (4)
But it also seems this shortage was in part due to a/ initial chaos and b/ people not wanting to take reserved seats not yet sat in (5)
It seems most people were sat down after about 45 mins or so, after train staff did some shuffling round. Includes Corbyn & his team (6)
You can plausibly argue both JC & Virgin right – at some point there seemed to be no free seats, but train not 'ram-packed' for 3 hrs (7)
I've been on train which initially appear chaotic and pver-packed, but which calm down after a while as people shuffle about (8)
So, you can theoretically accept JC not guilty of fakery, while Virgin CCTV still shows what it purports to show (9)
Anything beyond that is, of course, up to people's interpretation/judgement/prejudices. Now let us never hear of #traingate again (10)
11.57am BST
I’ve been talking to people in coach C. Susan is heading to Newcastle to visit her sister. She says she has been using this train for 25 years and has never once failed to get a seat. I ask her about nationalising the railways – she says it’s more important that the owner are British. She thinks Corbyn was doing a publicity stunt and she doesn’t have much time for him. She says the only time people are standing in the corridors is to stay by their luggage, not because of a lack of seats.
Also in coach C is Linda, who is taking her two sons, Robert and Jamie, to Newcastle. She says she always books 12 weeks in advance to get the best price. Susan, who is sitting at the same table, points out that not everybody has access to computers. There’s a long debate about how unnecessarily complicated ticketing is. It’s frustrating that different train companies have different rules, says Linda. But she adds: “I wouldn’t want to go back to British Rail.”
11.55am BST
I’ve just had my ticket inspected. Without mentioning that I’m a journalist I try to get a conversation started: “Plenty of spare seats today...,” I say. “Aye, even enough for Mr Corbyn,” comes the reply.
And, just as a reminder, this is the footage that started it all:
11.53am BST
The Labour leadership challenger, Owen Smith, has said it is obvious from the evidence shown in CCTV footage that Jeremy Corbyn chose to give up a seat and sit on the floor to make a point about overcrowded trains in a video.
But the MP also said his rival had made an important and legitimate point, and he echoed the Labour leader’s call for the renationalisation of Britain’s railways.
Related: Owen Smith: CCTV shows Jeremy Corbyn chose to sit on train floor
11.47am BST
As traingate rumbles on, here is what some members of the public are thinking:
Dear @richardbranson, I've often stood on @VirginTrains. Didn't realise u were watching. Now I know u care, how about a refund? #traingate
Isn't the key issue with #traingate that Corbyn's team should have RESERVED their seats? If they can't organise that, then.......
Like most PR disasters, #traingate could've been avoided if they'd told the truth from start. Chose not to. Now passive-aggresssive presser.
The most disappointing thing about #traingate is that we thought @jeremycorbyn was different. Un-electable perhaps, but a refreshing change.
11.44am BST
While the Guardian’s Martin Belam has not found quite a “ram packed” train this morning, one traveller tweeted this recent picture of a crowded train.
Here’s recent Virgin train I was on - 2.5hrs stood up & mum & baby in tears due to crush. Happens often… #traingate pic.twitter.com/Xeq1PtT4Np
11.33am BST
Here is what the Guardian’s Marina Hyde had to say about Corbyn’s somewhat reluctant answer to a Traingate question from Sky News.
Seconds from Keegan. SECONDS. https://t.co/dukTWdIabn
11.28am BST
This train is not going to meet any definition of “ram-packed”. In coach E, for example, there are 78 seats. Nineteen have got reserved tickets on them, but nobody is sitting in them. There are six empty seats. And there were five seats where someone had spread out their bags or laptops, and conceivably, at a push, I could have not been so British about it all and asked them to budge up.
11.23am BST
Virgin Trains and Jeremy Corbyn’s team have offered somewhat conflicting versions of events – Virgin argued that Corbyn could have sat in seats that were reserved but empty. Corbyn’s team said some of the seats that appear empty in the pictures actually had people in them or bags on them. I’m going to have a walk through standard class now to see how busy it is.
11.20am BST
Richard Branson’s Virgin Trains may have breached data protection rules by releasing CCTV footage of Jeremy Corbyn, reports say.
11.09am BST
So I got the train without a hitch. It doesn’t seem to be hugely busy. In fact, I’m slightly worried that it will be mostly full of journalists.
I’m standing outside the toilet in coach H watching someone from the BBC dictate a piece into their phone – or possibly they were broadcasting live. So you can at least say there’s one positive #Traingate outcome already – the media are suddenly much more interested in the standard of service on the east coast mainline.
10.57am BST
The first part of the mission is getting a ticket. As anyone who travels by rail regularly knows, buying tickets at the last moment is not the most economical way to do it. I’m planning to get off at York and come back to London, which should give me enough time to talk to plenty of people. That’s cost me £104.30.
10.47am BST
#Traingate has been the perfect politics silly season row. If you are a Jeremy Corbyn supporter, it is easy to portray it as yet another example of the vested interests of the establishment and big business working together to undermine him, for fear that his rail nationalisation policy will cost train fatcats their profits.
Related: Jeremy Corbyn fends off Branson attack over 'ram-packed' Virgin train
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