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The video evidence is telling.
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.

Just a caveat, I tend to do that if the seat's been reserved from a station that we've already been through i.e. if the person should be in the seat by now but isn't. Sitting in a reserved seat that just hasn't been occupied by it's rightful owner *yet* is just asking to get turfed out later.

I'm still kind of amazed they do all this with little bits of paper half the time, and they haven't got a way of saying 'this seat was reserved but the ticket holder hasn't turned up so help yourself'.

On the whole the way that seats are reserved on trains in the UK is a complete mess. For a start is is completely possible "book" seats in first class on trains that neither have a first class or even any means of reserving any seats.

Some trains do have an electronic reservation notices by the seats but IME they are not working as often as they are. The last time I experienced this travelling from Nottingham to London when the electronic reservation system failed. I was lucky as Nottingham was the starting station. However by the time we had left Leicester, first class was full of people who had upgraded because there were no seats left in standard class. I don't know if anyone who joined the train later had first class reservations and what the train staff did about them, but if it had been me I would have kicked up a fuss if I hadn't been able to get a seat because the reservation system had failed and now someone was sitting in it.

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.

A reservation that can be arbitrarily rescinded is not a reservation at all, tbh.


US (especially AMTRAC) trains are quite a different... culture(?), to be fair. It's pretty much a leisure activity in the main - if you just want to get from one city to another, you get a plane.