Nearly five months have passed since Cambridge returned perennial parliamentary candidate Daniel Zeichner as its MP.

Standing for parliament for the fifth time, the former councillor ousted Liberal Democrat Julian Huppert with a majority of just 599 votes.

With his career in the Commons off to a start at last, it would be hard to imagine a more eventful first few months as a Labour MP.

There is, of course, a larger story to tell about the Labour Party’s summer, but it is perhaps not surprising that the newly-elected Zeichner has had more than just a cameo role, given that the party seems to be trying to cut ties with the Blair-Brown years.

In July, the Cambridge MP was one of the 48 Labour MPs to vote against the government’s Welfare Reform Bill, defying acting leader Harriet Harman’s order to abstain.

Reflecting on the vote, he called the government’s proposals “unfair” and “economically unsound”, saying they would “penalise low paid people living and working in high-cost cities like Cambridge.”

Among the other Labour rebels that day was Jeremy Corbyn, at that time still something of a fringe figure. In the leadership contest of which Corbyn eventually emerged the victor, Zeichner backed the then Shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper.

Unlike Cooper, however, he remained open to a front-bench role in a Corbyn-led party. Now a Shadow Transport Minister, he was enthusiastic about Labour’s decision, saying: “I think the country’s looking for something different, looking for a change.”

When he was first chosen as Labour’s candidate for Cambridge in 2006, Zeichner described himself as “socialist in a modern context”, and would certainly appear to be a more natural ally for Corbyn than many within the current Parliamentary Labour Party.

Despite this, Zeichner was surprised when the new leader offered him a portfolio encompassing cycling, infrastructure and public transport in mid-September, saying he “wasn’t expecting it,” but nonetheless welcomed the “fantastic opportunity.”

The new Shadow Transport Minister hopes to use his position to press the government towards the re-regulation of bus services, having previously identified transport as one of “the big challenges facing Cambridge” following his election.

Never too far away from the front-line of Labour’s leftwards shift, Zeichner used Jeremy Corbyn’s eagerly anticipated first PMQs on 16th September to question David Cameron over NHS funding.

Zeichner asked when the Prime Minister was going to deliver on his promise of an extra £8 billion of funding, saying that the resignation of Addenbrooke’s chief executive Keith McNeil was at least in part symptomatic of the “financial crisis that is engulfing our health service”.

Outside the House of Commons, Zeichner lauded both Dr McNeil and the staff of Addenbrooke’s Hospital, attributing the “basic responsibility” for the former’s resignation to financial pressure being put on the NHS by the government.

This was not the only occasion in his first few months as an MP that Zeichner has directly criticised what he has perceived to be serious government failings.

Zeichner recently took Armed Forces Minister Penny Mordaunt to task over issues surrounding the stationing of Libyan personnel at Bassingbourn Barracks, 10.6 miles from the city. This came after two Libyan soldiers were charged with the rape of a man on Christ’s Pieces last November.

He particularly criticised the lack of transparency from the government over the end of a policy which required Libyan personnel to be supervised outside the barracks, and called for the Ministry of Defence to apologise to the people of Cambridge for their “negligence”.

The King’s College alumnus also invoked his constituents during the Budget debate at the start of July as he took issue with George Osborne’s plan to remove maintenance grants.

“The Chancellor boasted yesterday that students from poorer backgrounds had not been put off going to university, but as honourable members have pointed out, that was partly because these maintenance grants existed,” he said to an uncrowded House of Commons.

Among other issues that have received Zeichner’s attention this summer are what he called the “appalling housing crisis” in Cambridge, the campaign to lower the voting age to sixteen and the current refugee crisis in Europe.

The Cambridge MP is the primary sponsor of a motion that calls for the government to accept “many more thousands of genuine and desperate refugees” and proposes a voluntary register of homes willing to accommodate them.