John Major was famously a cricket fan. Ed Milliband outed himself as also being one, when he appeared on the BBC Radio Test Match Special programme a few weeks ago. He then admitted that the old Yorkshire and England player (and famously opinionated commentator) Geoff Boycott, was his childhood hero.

I do not think think attending the cricket was just a sham, just to get some niche publicity. Not only did Ed Milliband attend The Oval Test (in south London) when he was on the radio, but the Second England v South Africa Test at Leeds where he was attending in his own time. The commentators on Test Match Special reported that, during a rain break, the Leader of the Opposition was seen following Boycott (the Yorkshire County Cricket Club President) to go and look at the Yorkshire cricket museum.

What all this says about the policy Ed Milliband would follow, if he became Prime Minister, is difficult to say. Labour has been quite evasive about exactly what they would do if they were restored to office, since the last general election. I suspect it would not have been enormously different from what the coalition has done, so far as austerity politics is concerned.