George Osborne, the UK chancellor, on Wednesday presented the Autumn Statement on the government’s fiscal plans to the House of Commons and he had been delivered two unexpected gifts to take the sting from what would typically have been dubbed a “humiliating climbdown” or “U-turn” by the Opposition and political commentators: 1) The independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecast before any changes, an unexpected cumulative reduction in net borrowing of £27bn up to 2020-21 compared with summer forecasts, due to a jump in tax receipts 2) John McDonnell, the Labour shadow chancellor, quoted from Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book — a popular 1960s appendage of well-off student revolutionaries in the West at a time when the Chinese Communist leader was engaged in a Cultural Revolution that brought chaos to the country. McDonnell flung his copy of Mao’s quotations across the Table of the House, literally handing Osborne an opportunity to make a joke at his expense.