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A former paratrooper, Dan Jarvis made an unexpected and lucky landing in one of Labour’s safest seats when he was chosen to succeed the disgraced and jailed Eric Illsley.
He stormed to an easy victory in yesterday's by-election, winning more than 60 per cent of the vote and an even bigger majority than his predecessor, even though the turnout had slumped to just over a third of the electors. He joined Eric Joyce as the second former Army officer on the Labour benches.
The dark horse of the rapid selection contest, which was held even before Illsley had resigned, he was probably the least politically experienced on the nationally-imposed shortlist. But he saw off the competition from three Yorkshire-based candidates, including a local councillor, a former parliamentary candidate and a heavily-backed trade union lawyer.
But as another Army commander once remarked, it was “a damned close-run thing”. Tied in second place on the second count, he went through after the drawing of lots and then won on second-preference votes. There was some criticism of the process afterwards.
He fought an energetic, military-style campaign which his campaign manager Tom Watson MP described as “a speed march through the day”, starting before dawn. He named the campaign “Honey Badger” after one of the world’s most ferocious creatures.
Aged 38 on election he comes originally from Nottingham, from a political rather than a military family, and grew up amid the unemployment of the Thatcher years. He is Barnsley Central’s first MP born outside Yorkshire since 1938 and the first with no connections with the coal industry.
He joined the Army at the age of twenty-two and spent fifteen years in the Parachute Regiment. He was assistant to a NATO commander in the Balkans and served in Sierra Leone, Iraq, Northern Ireland and Afghanistan, where he led a company of troops from the Special Forces Support Group in the Helmand Province. He left with the rank of Major.
Though a Labour Party member for twenty years, he was barred from active politics by Queen’s Regulations. But he was on the shortlist for the controversial selection to stand for Islwyn in 2010 when he lost out to Christopher Evans.
He said the desire to become an MP was the same as had prompted him to join the Army – public service. But he kept his political opinions to himself while serving with the forces.
He said he would be moving from Hampshire to live in Yorkshire, where his divorced parents live.
His wife Caroline died last year after a long battle with cancer leaving him with a young son and daughter. He said the grief at his wife’s death had spurred him on to pursue a new career. He said she would have been proud of what he was doing.
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