After a barren winter, accusations of “magic money trees” are taking root once again. In light of tens of billions of pounds of uncosted tax pledges in the Tory leadership campaign, the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has promised there will be “no magic money tree economics” if his party gets into power. Labour’s social media team has been spreading the message, too, including “shaking the magic money tree” in its “Tory leadership bingo” card.
The line has traditionally been used against Labour by the Conservatives, perhaps most famously by Theresa May in 2017 as she tried to discredit Jeremy Corbyn’s spending commitments. The adage speaks to the wider rightwing narrative that the Labour party (or the left more generally) cannot be trusted with the economy – a myth that has long been effectively deployed by rightwing ministers and media alike. Think about the role the “no money left” note – a joke by Labour’s outgoing Treasury chief Liam Byrne to his successor in 2010 – had in embedding George Osborne’s claim that the cause of Britain’s financial problems wasn’t the global crash but Labour’s “overspending”.
