Labour Leadership 2016

A longer Guardian version with some more quotes:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/23/jeremy-corbyn-virgin-trains-disputes-claim-over-lack-of-seats

11.43am Corbyn takes a seat in coach H after staff directed passengers to use booked seats that had not been taken. A Corbyn source said the leader’s seats were provided after Virgin staff upgraded a family to first class to make space for him and Alvarez.

So train staff apparently first offered an upgrade to him, and when he refused that, offered one to other people, which meant that he could sit down. Very interesting.

What I said earlier about people not sitting in their actual reserved seats seems to be true, however:

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.

Not direct evidence, but whenever you get on a train there seem to be a lot of reserved seats that nobody sits in. It's very different in Germany--if people reserve seats, they're usually insistent on sitting in those precise seats, so that if someone else sits in them they usually shoo them away, even if the train's quite empty. (Personally, I don't like seat reservation, especially compulsory reservation as on the Eurostar.) Here, I always get the impression that people treat reservations as optional once they get on the train, which causes problems.