Gary Stevenson has achieved what many professional economists and think tanks have failed to do for decades: he has moved the conversation about extreme inequality from the fringes of internet forums directly into the heart of the British national consciousness. A former interest rate trader from Ilford who became Citibank’s most profitable trader by correctly betting on a disaster of growing inequality, Stevenson has spent the last few years using his insider knowledge to warn that our current economic system is fundamentally broken. His work through his YouTube channel and his bestselling memoir has provided a clear, urgent explanation for why ordinary families feel poorer even as the super rich see their fortunes skyrocket.

This week saw the release of his Channel 4 documentary How to Get Filthy Rich with Gary Stevenson. In the programme, he travels across the United Kingdom to meet people at both ends of the economic spectrum, from frontline workers affected by service cuts to billionaires living in opulence. One of the documentary’s most moving moments occurs when Stevenson returns to his former school in Ilford, where the headteacher reveals that food poverty has skyrocketed, with 43 per cent of pupils now receiving free school meals compared to virtually none a decade ago.

The backlash from the establishment has been as predictable as it has been personal. In most cases they follow the lead of Rory Stewart of The Rest is Politics podcast who was highly disrespectful and misinformed when he attacked Stevenson’s credibility earlier in the year. When Stevenson appears on platforms like Piers Morgan Uncensored, he is often met with panels of critics who seem more interested in attacking his character than engaging with his data. Chief among these is Dan Neidle, a former high level tax lawyer whose job it was to help corporations reduce their tax liabilities. In the documentary Neidle attacked Stevenson’s proposals for a wealth tax as economically illiterate. It is telling that these critics, and the think tanks they often represent, such as those with links to shadowy backers at the Institute of Economic Affairs, rarely offer any viable solutions of their own. Instead, they rely on their career credentials and media access to sneer at a man who has actually lived the reality of the trading floor and seen how the system rigs the game against the majority.

The media attacks in newspapers like The Telegraph are equally unsurprising. These outlets often portray Stevenson as naive or his documentary work as a waste of time, yet they fail to address his central thesis: that wealth is being sucked out of the public realm and middle class pockets into the hands of the 0.1%. This is not a debate about academic theory; it is a description of a real life divergence where passive ownership of assets now earns more than the median worker can ever hope to earn through labour. Those who benefit from this status quo have no desire for a genuine debate on ideas, so they go after Stevenson personally, hoping to silence a voice that resonates so clearly with a struggling public.

To truly understand the scale of the problem and how we can address it, the work of Gabriel Zucman is essential reading. Zucman’s recent book We Need to Tax Billionaires and his advocacy for a coordinated tax on billionaires align with Stevenson’s mission to tackle the issue of compounding wealth at the very top. We must recognise that the ultra rich, who own much of the media, will fight dirty to protect their interests. They rely on the wrongful fear that taxing wealth is a threat to the working and middle classes. In reality, Stevenson’s proposal for a wealth tax is specifically designed to fall on those with net assets above £10 million, protecting the 99% of households while reclaiming the resources needed to fund public services and improve living standards for everyone else.

We are at a turning point, and we must stay the course to build on what Gary Stevenson and others have built. The choice is stark: do we want a fairer, more equal society where we tax wealth and not just work, or are we content to be squeezed further by an elite that views our standard of living as a resource to be harvested? We must fight to win, vote for action, and refuse to be intimidated by an establishment that has no answers for the crisis it helped create. Stevenson has shown us how the game is played; now it is up to us to change the rules.