Barnsley Central byelection: major headache for Labour&#39;s opponents

Labour's choice to field a former Parachute Regiment major in the Barnsley byelection is not a random act of postmodern eccentricity

In a newsagent's in Barnsley town centre, the communist Morning Star is more prominently displayed than in most places nowadays. The last local pit closed 20 years ago, but local boy Arthur Scargill remains a working class hero to some, a generation after the doomed miners' strike.

Yet Labour's choice to fight the Barnsley Central byelection, Major Dan Jarvis, recently on active service with the Parachute Regiment in Afghanistan, is not a random act of postmodern eccentricity.

Jarvis, 38, beat two strong women candidates and a Unite-backed union lawyer from Leeds. Most of the shadow cabinet, including the neighbouring Doncaster MP, Ed Miliband, have since joined him on the doorstep.

The BNP and Ukip are increasingly forces to be reckoned with as vehicles for protest votes in ex-mining communities such as Barnsley. The BNP doubled its share of the vote to 8.9% on 6 May last year, but Ukip, whose posters are plentiful in pubs, hopes to overtake it this time.

Jarvis's selection has already had the effect of squashing whatever hopes Nick Griffin entertained of making the contest a BNP showcase. He has left the field to Enis Dalton to present herself as the BNP's "voice of women".

At a midweek session with grizzled ex-servicemen and the entire shadow defence team, it is easy to see Jarvis's clean-cut appeal. At a spritely 92, fellow-ex-Para Tom Hicks, who jumped on the "bridge too far" at Arnhem in 1944, is the star of the event. But a younger colleague (he jumped at Suez in 1956) whispers: "Anyone who's been in the regiment and risen to the rank of major must be all right."

Newly ex-Major Jarvis listens attentively to complaints from the men ? forces families deserve a better deal, they say ? and promises to do his best. "Very good of you to come. I appreciate it."

The tough towns of South Yorkshire are fertile army recruitment territory, and in Lord Roy Mason, MP here for 34 years, Barnsley had a famously hardline defence and Nothern Ireland secretary (1974-79): still alive at 86, still hated by Scargillites and IRA alike.

A member of the Labour party for 20 years, Jarvis comes from a political, not military background, and regards becoming an MP as a continuation of his career in public service: Belfast to Basra, Kosovo to Kabul.

Recently widowed, with two young children (luckily "both fans of Ed Miliband"), he is a counterintuitive choice. Nine candidates are contesting the seat, which ex-miner Eric Illsley vacated a few days before being sentenced to 12 months in prison for expenses fraud in January.

Businessman and writer Dominic Carman (son of George, the legendary QC), who aggressively took on the BNP in Barking, is the genial Lib Dem challenger.

Just six votes ahead of the Conservatives last time (both on 17%), one weekend poll suggests the Lib Dems are set to lose second place in Thursday's poll, both to James Hockney, a Cambridgeshire Tory councillor (he increased his vote in Barnsley East on 6 May) and to Ukip's Jane Collins. In reality, the weather may well determine the pecking order by boosting ? depressing ? the expected low turnout. It will take Noah's flood for Labour to lose, even with a Nottingham-born candidate.

Despite Barnsley's close-knit, brass-band parochialism (that foreigners begin at Leeds and Sheffield is no joke), none of the party candidates is local, though Ukip's Collins ("Yorkshire born and bred") is a miner's daughter from nearby Penistone, who is trying to broaden the party's appeal to disaffected Labour voters as well as Tories.

Middle-class Ukip, which outperformed the BNP at the Oldham East byelection, is doing well enough to worry bigger rivals.

Several voters told the Guardian they might back Collins, despite not knowing her name or much beyond Ukip's anti-EU stance.

"Definitely not BNP," an elderly-and-cross Tory woman emphasises. A "lifelong Labour man from mining stock" says he's hadit with politicians. "Blair and Brown blew it. They threw money around and now we have to pay it back. I may vote Ukip."

Even before his money troubles, Eric Illsley's hefty majority had been eroded since he took 67% of the vote in 1997 (post-expenses it was 47% last time). Many people who trusted their MP felt let down, but few voters mention him now in Barnsley.

In the angry, anti-politics grumpiness of 2011 there is so much else to complain about: the coalition, the cuts and the (Labour) council, Europe, immigration (Barnsley is 98% white) and those bankers' bonuses. The top man in Barnsley's own handsome, art deco town hall earns more than David Cameron.

The prime minister changed his mind about a visit. But Sheffield MP Nick Clegg, who seems far more unpopular ("He's the one who sold out to the Tories. They're in power because of you," one voter tells Dominic Carman) has also stayed away. "He's lost his map of South Yorkshire," as rivals put it. "No politician likes to cause pain, but the cuts are for the country's good," insists the urbane Carman.

Jarvis's novice status makes him cling to Labour's critique of coalition betrayals but he does not yet sound like a politician: a bonus. Carman practises Lib Dem pavement politics. He has collected 4,000 signatures to save the ancient market (licensed in 1249) from a clumsy council redevelopment, has promised to expand private business and takes every chance to promote his pet project ? "re-educating BNP voters about Nick Griffin", on which he is an expert. "Look at my interview with Griffin on YouTube," Carman tells them.

Hockney focuses what voter disaffection he can on Labour's local and national overspending. "I've been pleasantly surprised by the good reception I've been getting. People who've worked hard all their lives and paid into the system are angry," he reports. "The council is cutting core services but still wasting money."

Rain may fall on south Yorkshire on polling day, albeit not enough to deny Dan Jarvis his next career move to rough terrain in Westminster. But clean-cut majors, fresh from commanding 1 Para in support of the SAS in Helmand, will not always be on hand to save mainstream party politics from the voters wrath.