IT USED to be a favourite sneer of right-wing politicians and pundits that the Labour Party and the left must have a “magic money tree” with which to fund their public spending plans

After his Spring Statement, it would appear that Chancellor Rishi Sunak is a world-class arborist with the planet’s biggest money tree.

Apparently, he can afford to hand out a one-year cut in fuel duty costing the Treasury £5 billion, double the haphazard Household Support Fund to £1bn, raise the National Insurance Contribution (NIC) threshold at a cost of £6bn and then — if the conditions are right — trim the basic rate of income tax by 1p to lose an extra £5bn.

Then there are the additional pledges to reduce taxes and increase allowances for investment and small businesses now or in the autumn and to spend whatever it takes to expand Britain’s already massive military arsenal

And all this is to be achieved without a windfall tax on soaring gas, electricity and oil company profits, with no reduction or abolition of VAT on household fuel bills and certainly, no cancellation of April’s planned NIC increase

This would have to be a giant and very fruitful magic money tree indeed, one impervious to the harsh economic and financial weather that shows every sign of deteriorating

As our smug tree surgeon admitted to the House of Commons today that Britain’s economic growth in 2022 is likely to be 3.8 per cent, instead of the 6 per cent forecast last October, while inflation is heading for 9 per cent by December, averaging 7.4 per cent this year — almost double the rate predicted six months ago.

But then, Chancellor Sunak doesn’t have a magic money tree at all.

What he has is a strategy that dare not speak its name this side of a General Election, namely, a return to austerity.

He proudly told MPs that his statement and its bountiful promises were all perfectly consistent with the Conservative government’s fiscal rules. These are to cut public-sector debt over three years while borrowing only for investment purposes and achieving a balanced budget by 2024-2025.

There will be some tax deductions as well as tax rises; there will be spending increases in some sectors, as well real-terms cuts in others, although the commitment to use the NIC increase to fund a yearly £12bn investment in the NHS and social care appears to have been halved.

Overall, Sunak the imaginary arborist still expects government debt to fall and a balanced budget achieved by the 2024-2025 financial year.

But this strategy rests heavily on the government receiving much bigger tax receipts as the result of economic growth, rather than from higher rates of taxation. Yet growth is due to fall substantially next year to 1.6 per cent — lower than forecast — and then hover around that low rate until at least 2026

Which means that Boris Johnson’s government has only one significant course of action if it is to hit its fiscal targets: to squeeze living standards already heading for the biggest drop since records began in 1956, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility.

That means more real-terms cuts in public-sector pay, pensions, benefits and most public services at local as well as national levels across England, Scotland and Wales.

Therefore, the TUC cost-of-living demonstration on June 18 must be a declaration of class warfare to protect and improve the incomes, living standards and quality of life of the majority of people in Britain.

Taxes on wealth, windfall taxes on corporate super-profits, public ownership, economic planning and an industrial strategy are ideas whose time has come again.