Richard Branson, Jeremy Corbyn and the ‘Traingate’ frenzy

The media frenzy in the last few days over whether or not Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn walked past an empty seat on a train has seen new levels of journalistic failure when it comes to verifying stories and asking important questions. The supposed ‘scandal’ arose when Virgin Trains disputed Corbyn’s claim that one of their trains he was on was too crowded for him to get a seat. There were many obvious questions that seemed to be left aside by journalists covering the story. For instance: Jeremy Corbyn is set to win by a landslide in the next few weeks against Owen Smith. Why, then, would it be in his team’s interest to create a story on a public train which could be so easily be proven to be fake?

It is highly unlikely that the ‘sitting on the floor’ video was a stunt, for a range of reasons. Firstly, it isn’t necessary for the Corbyn team to do things like this to beat Owen Smith. They could stay silent for the next four weeks and still easily win the contest against Smith. Similarly, it wouldn’t be necessary to fake this to argue the case for public ownership of railways. The majority of the UK public are already in favour of renationalising the railways. Secondly, if the Corbyn team had faked a stunt like that on a train that wasn’t overcrowded, it is unlikely that it would have gone unnoticed on the day. All it would have taken was one passenger to tweet about it and no doubt the Guardian would’ve been all over that tweet on the day. In general, if the campaign had a level of competence that made it try to fake things like that, it probably wouldn’t have lasted until now.

Many members of the public who were on the train have already stated that Corbyn genuinely did have to sit on the floor. It appears to be a situation of no controversy whatsoever: quite simply, there was no free unreserved seat for Corbyn at the start of the journey, and then later there was. Yet the UK was tipped into a frenzy of discussion about the details of a video of a Corbyn walking past some reserved seats.

The image posted on the Virgin Media Room and Richard Branson’s twitter account was deemed by at least the Mirror, Guardian, and Independent websites as being the top story of the day. If nothing else, that is an insight into how outrageous the media backlash against the left in Britain has become. This story was pounced upon by editors as proof that Corbyn was a phoney; an attempt to ridicule him, his team and his supporters. Again, the facts behind the story didn’t really bothered the journalists who ran (fairly blindly) with Virgin/Richard Branson’s story. We might hope that journalists would apply a healthy degree of skepticism to the claims of a billionaire who has a very direct interest in politically defeating the movement behind Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party.

The very fact that Richard Branson became personally involved in this (by tweeting the image) is at the very least a bit telling — this is more than just a press release from Virgin Trains in response to a bad review. This was a political intervention from one of the UK’s wealthiest businessmen. Branson is a huge benefactor of Conservative rule, which has helped his organisation obtain railways, banks, and health contracts from the UK government. There are many reasons that a magnate like Branson would oppose the policies of Corbyn, one of the main ones being fear of privatised railways — a very lucrative situation for the likes of Branson — being returned to public ownership.

It is likely that Branson and others like him are starting to fear the very real possibility of a radical Labour government in the UK. Their sense of entitlement cannot be tolerated by a government that stands for the majority in society. No doubt there’ll be more such interventions like this from other UK businessmen as the political tide continues to shift against them.