Labour's Dan Jarvis condemns coalition's cuts after winning with an 11,771 majority Press Association

Labour coasted to victory in the Barnsley Central byelection, in spite of the jailing of the party's previous MP for expenses fraud, with the Lib Dems slumping to sixth place.

Ukip ended the night with a huge rise in its share of the vote and most to celebrate.

The result was particularly grim for the Liberal Democrats whose vote fell sharply despite the party fielding an experienced candidate in Dominic Carman, son of the celebrated barrister George Carman.

Voters took revenge on Nick Clegg, whose U-turn on student fees and hawkish line on cuts have made him particularly unpopular in South Yorkshire, where he represents Sheffield's affluent Hallam constituency. His party was beaten by the BNP and a local independent as well as Labour, Ukip and the Tories.

Labour's Dan Jarvis, a former paratroop major, won an overwhelming share of the vote but on an abysmal turnout of 36.5% which left the coalition partners with humiliatingly low figures.

Clegg and the prime minister David Cameron stayed away from the contest, after little evidence emerged that the disgrace of Illsley, Labour MP for 24 years, was damaging Labour's campaign. A popular former miner, Illsley's conviction and 12-month prison sentence caused genuine shock locally.

Jarvis, 38 and a single father-of-two after his wife's recent death, chimed with voters in one of the services' traditional recruiting grounds, modestly down-playing a record in Iraq and Afghanistan which spoke for itself. This outflanked initial hopes by the BNP that its candidate, Enis Dalton, might win a showcase result. Internal splits also affected the former BNP stronghold, where the party has previously polled more than 25% in four of the constituency's wards at local polls.

Jarvis is the first Labour MP for the seat since 1938 not to have been born in Yorkshire or have links with coal mining - even the Tories' James Hockney beat him on that with a grandfather who worked down the pit. But none of his serious contenders were from Barnsley either and his energy, enthusing activists by naming his campaign Operation Honey Badger after the 'ferocious and fearless animal' – kept morale high.

Born in Nottingham, he has moved from Hampshire to Barnsley after resigning from the army to fight the election. He joined the Labour party 20 years ago but was not allowed to take part in active politics while a serving soldier.

Hockney was credited with sticking to his guns in Barnsley, where he fought the neighbouring East constituency in May and achieved the biggests swing to the party in Yorkshire. He was briefly threatened with replacement by Darren Gough, hankered after by Cameron, but the Barnsley-born England cricketer decided that he was too busy to add a hopeless by-election to his commitments.

Carman's political experience includes an aggressive campaign against the BNP last May in Barking, where the extreme right wing party's leader Nick Griffin was trounced by Labour's Margaret Hodge. But he made no headway against the national tide in Barnsley, in spite of eager pavement politics including a 4,000-strong petition over the future of the town's famous market. The Monster Raving Loony party was as happy as ever with its day in the sun, although its co-leader Howling Lord Hope, who shares office with his cat Cat Mandu failed to come anywhere near the high point of 1,114 votes achieved by his predecessor Screaming Lord Sutch at the 1994 by-election in nearby Rotherham.