Sir Nicholas Winterton is a dinosaur. He is an out-of-touch, retiring MP. He is not representative of the Conservative Party when he says

If I was in standard class [on the train] I would not do work because people would be looking over your shoulder the entire time, there would be noise, there would be distraction….

They are a totally different type of people… There’s lots of children, there’s noise, there’s activity. I like to have peace and quiet when I’m travelling…

The people who are sitting in judgement of us not only travel first class themselves, but in the main are on at least twice the salary of members of Parliament.

What Labour and the Lib Dems are trying to do is imply that all Conservatives are like Winterton. Despite nothing being further from the truth. I have never travelled first class on a train, for example. Winterton is 72; he is old. He is out of touch. He is not even standing again as an MP. He’s about as represntative of Conservatives as Mark Oaten and his rent boys are of the Lib Dems – ie. not at all.

Whilst Winterton’s comments are extremely offensive to the majority of people there is, however, a grain of truth: it is easier to work in first class because it’s quieter and less crowded and so all their time travelling can be spent doing the job they are paid to do (and considering the confidential nature of the some of the work they do – such as helping constituents – being in a crowded train compartment and working could have data privacy issues).

It really depends on the length of travel – if they are spending several hours on the train – such as an MP travelling down from Scotland – paying for first class seems a small price to pay. In business, there is usually a cut off point of about 2-3 hours of travel time when employees are entitled to upgrade, why should the same not apply to MPs?

What marks Winterton out as a dinosaur though is his apparent disdain for the hoi polloi like us. He reason for disdaining standard class train travel appears to hinge more on the “totally different type of people” who use it rather than anything else.

Sir Nicholas Winterton is retiring, and good riddance to him. He is not a representative of the modern Conservative Party, but a dinosaur, a relic from the past.