Dan Jarvis a dream candidate, say Barnsley's Labour activists

The man who gave the coalition the Barnsley chop was a "dream" candidate, a cluster of rapturous Labour activists said after the poll. Dan Jarvis is Barnsley Central's first MP since 1938 with neither Yorkshire nor coalmining links. Jarvis joins a group of genuinely new and different Labour champions for strongholds with a history of choosing local candidates, usually from heavy industry trade unions. Both Milibands are among them – Ed in Doncaster North, David in South Shields – along with all three women who now represent Sunderland and the erudite Europhile Denis MacShane in Rotherham. Jarvis is, even so, particularly notable: 38, demobbed as a major in the Parachute Regiment to fight the election, picking up his family life after the death from cancer of his wife Caroline, the mother of their son, eight, and daughter, six. And no weathervane recruit to socialism – he joined the party when he was 18. His family in Nottingham encouraged his interest, which increased when he studied politics at Aberystwyth University before Sandhurst. Army life led to a Hampshire base but he has moved to Barnsley and promises to immerse himself in the town. The local bard Ian McMillan has yet to write a poem about him but the material is there. His commitment to fight for the place was signalled by the codename he gave his election campaign: Operation Honey Badger, after one of the fiercest animals in the world .