In a film shown on The Guardian, the Labour leader said he was experiencing a problem "many passengers face every day" on the London to Newcastle train.
But Virgin said CCTV showed Mr Corbyn and his team walking past available seating before starting filming.

Anyone who travels on trains knows to check the stations reserved to/from on the reservation tickets. He seems to have used the fact that they were reserved at some points on the train's journey as an excuse, made his little film, then sat down in one of the many empty seats. Typical politician, twisting things for his own needs.

The thing about seat reservations in the UK is that they are effectively complimentary as you don't actually pay anything for the reservation itself. The conditions of carriage give the TOCs the option to overrule reservations at will if they want/need to (for example because the system broke or an earlier train failed and they need to ram the people from the earlier train onto the next one). What makes the system mainly work is that most people on trains abide by the little bits of paper and are generally nice about it.

I remember travelling back to Scotland for Christmas one year. The previous train had died or something so they were squashing extra people on the one I was one. Things, surprisingly, weren't too bad when the train got to Peterborough and I did manage to find and sit in my reserved seat. Up the line a number of Americans got on and were confronted with the fact that they'd lost their reserved seats because they'd got on at the wrong station - their tickets (and hence reservations) were from Kings Cross but they'd got on at Doncaster (or one of the D stations anyway). As they didn't occupy their seats a Kings X their reservations were null and void. They were particularly aggrieved as they'd paid for First Class and spent the rest of their journey standing (in first class right enough). Apparently, if you book a seat on Amtrac in the US that's 'your' seat and nobody else can sit in it even if you don't get on at the correct station, or that was the impression I got listening to their grumbling.