Train travel can be fraught with hazards for a politician, with no chance of a quiet table seat in first class in order to read briefing papers, for fear of photos with your free tea and shortbread being plastered on social media. Economy class travel means “man of the people” credentials, but it can also mean a “ram-packed” carriage. Or it can mean not being able to sit next to your wife, or whatever the latest explanation is from Jeremy Corbyn, after Virgin released footage of the politician walking past empty seats before being filmed sitting on the floor in the busy train.
But with a diary of events from Plymouth to Pontypridd and Perth, politicians regularly commit railway faux pas.
The Great Train Snobbery
Corbyn may have decided to sit in the vestibule when he found no seats on a Virgin train to Newcastle, but in 2012, George Osborne and his aides had a rather different solution – never mind the standard class tickets, just sit in first class.
Unfortunately for the then-chancellor, he was on the train with an ITV reporter, who then tweeted as Osborne was confronted by a Virgin train guard and told to pay a stonking £189.50 upgrade fee.
Osborne was still on the train bound for Euston when the press pack raced to the station to greet him as the train pulled in, but the chancellor decided to slip out of the goods entrance. There is a lesson here both Osborne and Corbyn can learn – just book a seat.
Toilet Humour
A Virgin train was the scene again for a blunder by health secretary Jeremy Hunt, who startled travellers on the journey to Manchester in 2015 as he pulled the emergency cord in the toilet instead of flushing the loo. The MP was unlikely to go unrecognised on the day of his embarrassing error – the train was en route to the first day of Conservative party conference, and packed full of journalists and Tory party members.
Anti-pasty aggravation
Deep in the 2012 row over the so-called pasty tax, then-prime minster David Cameron tried to prove he was not unfairly targeting Cornish bakers, insisting he enjoyed the tasty pastry snack on a train journey from Leeds.
“I love a hot pasty,” the prime minister insisted. “I think the last one I bought was from the West Cornwall Pasty Company. I seem to remember I was in Leeds station at the time.”
But Cameron’s pasty credentials were soon exposed as a hollow sham – it emerged the West Cornwall Pasty Company closed its Leeds outlet in 2007.
A Downing Street spokesman was forced to admit the prime minister may have bought his snack from a different outlet, or even a different city. Or maybe even in his imagination.
PM’s frantic backpedal
It’s not only trains that can cause embarrassment. In 2006, as leader of the opposition with the slogan “vote blue, go green”, Cameron was left red-faced as it emerged he cycled to work – with his shoes and briefcase in the boot of a car following him.
