I actually find the various comments above more than a little disappointing, coming from (I presume) a significant proportion of actual rail staff. Here we have a passenger, along with all their fellow member-of-the-public passengers, grossly inconvenienced by an (according to NRE) advertised connection not being held, and the principal attitude those in the industry can muster (including a couple whose seniority in the business and/or this website should be, or once should have been, better) is a "yah boo sucks to you" series of responses.
It doesn't matter which political party the minister happens to be from, they are ultimately responsible for the industry and the enormous amount of public funds it sucks up, and if this is the approach of those employed by the industry then no wonder if their plans for advancement are not taken seriously.
Nobody seems to have analysed why the initial train was late (apparently regularly). But the day-to-day operation of the timetable is not in the hands of politicians at all, it is in the hands of the self-same rail staff. And yet this is the best they can do.
If this comes over like the school headmaster doing one of those all-encompassing reprimands in morning assembly, then the comments above are pretty much like the responses from the primary school classes when the headmaster slipped on the snow and fell over.