Dan Jarvis is benefiting from Kieron Dyer Syndrome

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Labour's leadership election was depressing for the party even before the dawn of Corbynmania.

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago:

The problem for Labour is that the candidates who have something to say - Liz Kendall and Jeremy Corbyn - do not expect to win. That is why they can say what they really think. 

The two front-runners, Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper, are so anxious about alienating different constituencies (the press, party members, the wider public) that they find it hard to say anything at all.

It was partly for that reason that I concluded that the next Labour prime minister is not in this leadership election.

I also suggested that the next Labour prime minister would be Dan Jarvis.

That is where I would put my money, and there can be no doubt that staying out of this election will only help Jarvis's reputation.

But maybe he is benefiting from Kieron Dyer Syndrome.

Let me explain.

In the day when we all believed that England's 'golden generation' (Ferdinand, Campbell, Beckham, Owen, Scholes Butt) was going to win us the 2002 World Cup, there was just one problem. We  had no one to play in an attacking role on the left.

But there was an answer. Kieron Dyer had broken into the Ipswich side as a teenager and then signed for Newcastle. He looked a great prospect.

He was injured in the run up to the tournament and could not play in any of the warm up games. But the odd thing was that the less he played, the more certain the pundits became that he was the answer to England's problems. His stock could hardly have stood higher.

At last Dyer was fit to play for England. And everyone saw that he wasn't very good.

So maybe Dan Jarvis's growing reputation is a an example of Kieron Dyer Syndrome. Labour must hope this is not the case.