Meet the foul-mouthed, left-wing, working-class ex-city trader named Gary who is gaining tens of thousands of YouTube followers by claiming HE has the formula for a fairer economy

As he tells it, the story of Gary Stevenson, a foul-mouthed, left-wing, blue-collar nut and self-proclaimed YouTube economics guru is a story worthy of a modern-day Charles Dickens. The 37-year-old socialist, who claims to have the formula for a fairer economy, says he has made so much money in the city that he will never have to work again.

He also claims to provide his economic wisdom for free – although his recent best-selling memoir, which can be found on coffee tables across trendy Islington, is said to have attracted a six-figure advance.

There is no charge for his YouTube channel Garyseconomics, which has 229,000 subscribers and where he shares his views on the economy.

“I’m not here because I’m a good person, I’m here because I’m a good economist and I don’t want this damn country I grew up in to fall. ‘king’s toilet’, he rages, in an observation that is typical of his oeuvre.

It’s hardly John Maynard Keynes. But Stevenson, who often wears a pom-pom hat and scarf, is convinced he is right, while other, more respected academic figures are woefully wrong. For example, he predicts that unless politicians address wealth inequality and the lack of affordable housing, many members of the middle class will fall into poverty.

So he calls for a wealth tax, or for rules that force the rich to spend more, which would mean they would have to pay more VAT.

But his views have been criticized for being too simplistic, lacking nuance and not fully developed.

Part of his appeal to his young and gullible followers on YouTube, who lap up his dubious pearls of economic wisdom, is his impeccable working-class pedigree.

According to Stevenson, he acquired wealth through his own naked skills.

His childhood in Ilford, east London, was so tough, he claims, that there were times when he barely had any clothes apart from his school uniform.

Stevenson is compact, shaved and muscular. He is the son of a mailman who adores his Artful Dodger-esque personality.

He grew up in a terraced house with a railway line running past the back garden – but crucially, within sight of the city’s enormous wealth.

‘We were poor. But being in East London we were able to see the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf lit up at night. It was on our property, it felt like it could be ours.”

Expelled from Ilford County High School at the age of 15 for drug dealing – transferring £3 worth of cannabis to a classmate – he could easily have gone down a downward path. But instead, Stevenson’s life took an unexpected turn.

His super-sharp brain helped him gain a university place at the London School of Economics, despite being expelled from high school.

From there he moved to a trading desk at Citibank, where he made obscene amounts of money very quickly.

In his riveting memoir, The Trading Game, Stevenson paints a vivid picture of cocaine-using traders who represent just about everything that is wrong with the capitalist system. On his first day at Citibank, at the start of the 2008 global financial crisis, Stevenson arrived not in a suit and boots, but in a rhino logo tracksuit and Leyton Orient Football Club socks. Raised as a Mormon by his parents, he began to question the religion’s teachings. He subsequently admitted that he was skeptical about everything except his own intellect.

At Citi, far from being impressed by his humble origins, he viewed the economists and posh bankers who predominated with utter contempt.

“Rich people expect poor people to be stupid,” he says. ‘The fanciest kids from the fanciest schools in the nicest suits – I decided to show them that we’re not all stupid, us kids in tracksuits.’ In early 2009, during his first year as a trader, he earned a £13,000 bonus.

A year later, when he was just 23, he had increased the amount to £395,000. After that he made unspecified millions.

By 2011, he says he had become the bank’s most successful trader – and even the best trader in the world. Former colleagues dispute this.

Kent Bray, a former colleague of Stevenson’s at Citi, says: ‘Gary was a good trader, but he wasn’t the best. He didn’t do it long enough.’

But despite the money, he was not happy.

One reason, he says, is that the so-called experts he worked with were very poor at their core responsibility, which is predicting the next interest rate movements.

Stevenson believes he can see what other economists cannot.

Unlike his rivals who have a public school education, he believes his background means he has a foot in the real world. After the financial crisis, most economists assumed that consumer confidence and spending would quickly rise again.

However, Stevenson describes returning to Ilford to see friends struggling to pay their mortgages.

So he gambled on a recovery and, he claims, made a fortune.

A recent post on X (formerly Twitter), where he has 67,400 followers, smacks of contempt.

“Statistics are important, but having studied economics for 20 years, I know that a good economist can generally come up with a statistic that backs everything up,” he says.

And, unlike some of his womanizing colleagues, Stevenson never embraced the good life because he couldn’t completely turn his back on his Mormon upbringing.

Instead of Porsches and Rolexes, he bought a flat (but no furniture) and a bicycle to ride to work before dawn.

His experience at Citi, he says, convinced him that there were fundamental flaws in the economy and society. He said the low interest rate policy introduced after the global financial crisis allowed the rich to get richer by buying stocks and bigger houses. The poor, in turn, became poorer.

“I think the history of the modern economy over the last 15 years is basically terminal cancer misdiagnosed as a series of seasonal colds,” he says.

Trading, Stevenson says, gives him insight into how the world works.

‘For me, trading is like looking at the weather forecast. Stopping trading would be like stopping watching the news. Like it’s the only way I know. It’s as if the world reveals itself.’

Stevenson became burned out and left Citi at age 27, after, he claims, he had earned enough to not need to make more money.

He enrolled for a DPhil at Oxford University, but says he became disillusioned.

Not everyone is as convinced of Stevenson’s genius as he is.

Some online critics describe his views as ‘immature’, while others accuse him of wanting to climb the ladder over other working-class kids with the ambition to make it in the city.

His YouTube posts are certainly provocative, with titles such as: ‘why growth is stupid’ and ‘the illusion of improvement’.

They may be eye-catching, but they add little to the serious debate about how to improve the lives of ordinary people.

And there is certainly a contradiction in him turning so cruelly on the City when it was his own escape route that gave him the luxury of expressing his views.

Former colleague Kent Bray added: “Gary makes everyone he worked with at Citi seem amoral. In fact, many of us sympathize with his advocacy for a wealth tax, but we wonder how it can be implemented and whether the banking sector is the biggest problem.

‘He never mentions that 50 percent of everything you earn in banking today goes to the government in tax money. I am grateful for my time in banking. It’s painful for those of us who tried to help him.”

Although Stevenson is fiercely critical of capitalism, it is interesting to note that he believes that the prices of gold, housing and stocks will continue to rise. He claims not to hate the rich because he himself is rich.

If anything, he urges his fan base to stay away from cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

And you can expect to hear a lot more from him. Although he is a hero to many Labor voters, he points out to Keir Starmer and shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves that he will criticize them if they take power.