Gary Stevenson wants a wealth tax. Then what?

“I would not have chosen that title for sure,” he tells me over Zoom. “It’s not really telling you how to get filthy rich. I mean, it’s obviously discussing why it’s difficult for young people to make money.

“I really think the documentary is good, I’m happy with it, I’m proud of it, but the title is a little bit clickbait, isn’t it?”

As in his online videos, Stevenson is casually dressed and quick to laugh. But beneath the easygoing manner sits a deep intensity.

“The problem we obviously have is that billionaires are not very visible, right? They’re visible on TV, but you don’t see a billionaire in your day-to-day life, and it’s not even really possible to conceptualise for an ordinary person what a billionaire is, because a billionaire, a billion is such an enormous amount of money.

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“But it’s much easier for far right parties to say ‘immigrants are coming over and taking your jobs and buying your houses’ because they live in the community shoulder to shoulder with other ordinary people.”

Stevenson believes that strategy will ultimately fail. “The weakness that [the far right] have, is that they’re starting to win elections, and when they do win elections, they cut taxes on billionaires, that sees living standards fall. So, the problem you’re going to have is that as and when they are in power, they’re going to fail on the economy. The strength that we have is that we’re right.”

Throughout the documentary, Stevenson meets people struggling with the cost of living crisis alongside some of those who have benefited most from Britain’s economic system. Among those he interviews are Reform donor Bassem Haidar, economist Dan Neidle and property investor Sam Leeds.

Who, of these controversial figures, was the worst to interview for Stevenson? Undoubtedly Leeds.

“I think he ruins people’s lives. And I just couldn’t do nicey nicey with him. I was kind of hoping, if I’m totally honest, they’d kick us out of his hotel, because I didn’t want to spend the day with him.”

His verdict on Neidle, who says Stevenson’s prescription for a wealth tax is economically illiterate, is scarcely warmer.

“You know, what can you say about Dan Neidle? He’s a smart guy. I don’t know what gets him out of bed. I don’t know why he cares so much about destroying the world.”

Like much of Stevenson’s online work, the documentary ultimately builds towards the same conclusion: Britain needs a wealth tax. Specifically, he argues for a 2% annual tax on wealth above £10m.

“If the economy is going to 1% and this billionaire class are growing their wealth at 15, 20% and what we see very clearly is collapsing the wealth of the middle class, working class, and the government. Imagine you had cancer, and that cancer was growing at a rate of 40% a year, and you’re growing at a rate of 1% a year. Eventually, you’re 100% fucking cancer, aren’t you?”

One of the documentary’s strongest moments comes when Stevenson returns to his former school. His former headteacher, Dan Moynihan, recalls that a decade ago food poverty was virtually unheard of at the school. Today, food banks have become commonplace and around 43% of pupils receive free school meals.

“I’ve never seen poverty to the extent that we have today, ever in the past.”

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The picture painted is one of decline that stretches well beyond household finances, so I asked Stevenson whether a wealth tax risks being presented as a solution to problems far bigger than economics alone.

“If your house is on fire, here’s a fire extinguisher. Now, if I give you the fire extinguisher, it’s not going to stop you from fucking breaking up with your boyfriend, you know?

“I’m not saying I’m fucking God of everything fixing the world. What I’m saying is I am one of the best inequality economists in the world. I can absolutely fucking guarantee you, if you don’t do a wealth tax, it’s going to be a fucking disaster. I think it’s time that we stopped having these stupid, magical thinking debates about economics.”

Stevenson claims to have been one of the top traders in the world, though this has been disputed by several of his former colleagues speaking to the Financial Times, and in our conversations it is clear that his confidence in his own economic judgment has not diminished.

At one point, I asked Stevenson how he currently managed to make ends meet, and he told me that he still betted on economic outcomes.

I was a little bit shocked. At the beginning of his documentary he stated he left the City because he didn’t want to continue getting rich by betting that other people would get poor, and yet, he was still doing exactly that.

“Of course I do. This is what I’m good at. If you made every single person who expressed an economic opinion on the news or on TV or my documentary bet their own money on that economic opinion being right, there’d be a lot less fucking bullshit on the news right now. I bet my money on this, because I’m fucking right.”

Throughout our conversation, his self-belief is absolute. It is arguably one of the qualities that has made him such an effective communicator online, and his growing public profile has inevitably fuelled speculation that politics could be next. In recent weeks, rumours have circulated that Stevenson could become an adviser to the man widely tipped to be the next prime minister, Andy Burnham.

“I’m kind of enjoying those rumours,” Stevenson laughs, “but if I am, then they haven’t told me yet.”

I ask what he makes of Burnham, and of those who argue that politicians should have a firmer grasp of economics themselves: “I wish we were allowed to say some people are economists and some people are not economists. Listen, of course, the prime minister should have a good basic understanding of economics and his economic policy, but economic policy also requires experts.

“Zack Polanski is obviously a political insurgent, and then you’re pinning him down on exact details of economic policy, and it’s like, well, it’s the same with me when I come on and they say, ‘all right. Well, give me the fucking details.’

“This is not a fucking Marvel movie where Andy Burnham comes in and saves the fucking world. Listen, this needs to be solved by a large number of people, experts in different regions, having sensible discussion and debating things publicly.”

Throughout our interview, Stevenson is completely unwavering when describing the crisis of wealth inequality. However, when I press him on the mechanics, his arguments become noticeably less concrete.

His proposed wealth tax has been estimated to raise around £20bn a year – a significant sum, but nowhere near enough to transform every struggling public service. I ask how he would navigate Britain’s fiscal rules, what role the bond markets would play, and how the wider public finances would add up. I never really got an answer. 

And this presents a rather uncomfortable dilemma. Viewers who finish the documentary and are persuaded by Stevenson’s diagnosis may still be left asking the same question: but what happens now?

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For all the urgency with which he presents Britain’s wealth inequality crisis – and to his credit, he makes that case compellingly – his proposed solution remains strikingly singular. Almost every road leads back to the same destination: a wealth tax.

So what, I ask him, can ordinary people actually do if they agree with him?

“You know, join the Labour Party, join the Green Party, join fucking Reform if you have to. Just push this narrative. Spread the message, you know, become an economist, get a job at the Bank of England, you know, make a fucking YouTube channel or on Instagram, but if you can’t do any of those things, just tell your friends and family, use my videos, use whoever’s, you know, just spread it.”

It is a characteristically passionate answer, but also one that encapsulates both the strengths and weaknesses of Stevenson’s argument.

To be fair, he admits that he is not offering a fully fledged programme for government, and he is also right to point out that critics can sometimes become so preoccupied with picking apart the details of individual policies that they avoid confronting the broader problem altogether.

Yet if the crisis is as immediate as Stevenson insists it is, it is reasonable to ask what happens between persuading people that a wealth tax is necessary and actually delivering one.

Perhaps the purpose of How to Get Filthy Rich is simply to convince viewers that Britain’s defining political divide is no longer left versus right, but ordinary people versus extreme wealth. And whether that leads to meaningful change or just more shouting remains to be seen.

How to Get Filthy Rich with Gary Stevenson is on Channel 4 on April 8 and then streaming