Gary Stevenson: Tax wealth NOW or prepare for poverty

**Gary Stevenson** (0:00)
Am I tough enough?

**SPEAKER_2** (0:01)
Strong and stable leadership.

**Gary Stevenson** (0:02)
Total ruba.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:03)
Hell yes, I'm tough enough.

**Gary Stevenson** (0:04)
Shut the fridge. Not another once. It's the PoliticsJOE Podcast.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:10)
Gary Stevenson, welcome to PoliticsJOE.

**Gary Stevenson** (0:13)
Thanks for having me back.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:14)
It's great to have you back. I think you may have the record for most appearances on the channel, believe it or not.

**Gary Stevenson** (0:19)
Then this must be what, third maybe?

**SPEAKER_2** (0:21)
I think it's third, yeah.
Who might be behind you? Matt Kennard's been on, no, Matt Kennard's been on three times as well, actually, so you're tied at the top. How does that feel? Fantastic.

**Gary Stevenson** (0:31)
I don't know who that person is on the phone, but I'm sure he's a great guy.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:35)
He's a fantastic guy.
We're here to talk about your new documentary, How To Get Filthy Rich. But before that, we're sat here a couple of days after Andy Burnham has become the Prime Minister.

**Gary Stevenson** (0:48)
One day after, no?

**SPEAKER_2** (0:49)
One day after now, but I wanted to make it mysterious for them a lot. Okay, yeah, sorry, sorry.
When are we shooting?

**Gary Stevenson** (0:56)
Nobody knows. Yeah.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:58)
Give me your first initial thoughts on what the Burnham government is going to be like.

**Gary Stevenson** (1:04)
So I've been actively trying to lobby Labour for, let's say, about three years now, which is about as long as I've been big enough to make any sort of impact.
The Kiir Starmer government and the Kiir Starmer pre-government were never really very interested at all. It was pretty clear they didn't want to do anything serious on top-level inequality, wealth taxes. That was a bit depressing. So I did a video before Kiir Starmer came in, before the election, in fact, saying they're going to win landslide, they're not going to do anything on inequality, they're going to fail on living standards, who will be very unpopular very quickly, and he'll get booted out, which was good predictions. Obviously, we've known Starmer's going for like a year, really, and we've known it's going to probably be Burnham for say, three, four months. And I've been trying to lobby. There's been a massive change in what I'm getting back from Labour MPs, a lot more open-minded, a lot more people willing to talk, haven't met Burnham himself, have been trying. All this sort of Burnham whispering behind the scene. You're trying to talk to somebody who knows Burnham. And everyone's trying to work out who... What does he think? Yeah, who are the guys who actually talk to Burnham? People are talking to me. Burnham hasn't talked to me. I wouldn't say I've had much top-level contact. I don't think he's going to do anything serious on top-level inequality. I think one thing people don't realise is they will have to do something on tax.
And they will raise tax on someone. And I'm saying it needs to be taxed on the very, very rich. And basically, people who are paid by the very, very rich are trying to lobby for taxes on the middle class and the upper middle class. And I think they will probably win. So you'll probably get something like, I think there's a very good chance we'll get equalisation of income tax and capital gains. Capital gains is currently about half income tax in terms of percentage rate. That change will probably get made. That is effectively a tax on the upper middle because capital gains is paid when you sell. Rich people, very, very rich people never have to sell assets because they have so much passive income.
So I think he'll end up doing these taxes on the upper middle.
That might help him a bit. The problem you have, of course, is the upper middle is not really the problem here. The middle and the upper middle, depending on where you split that. Some of them are being squeezed. The real problem is that very, very rich end. I don't see the serious appetite to deal with that. I'm going to do my best to try and lobby him or whoever I can speak to to do something on that. But I really, really hope this is not true. I think what you're probably going to get at the moment is failure to act seriously on the very, very top end.
What that means is, and I've spoken about this a lot, I speak about it in my documentary. Every single day that passes, that the very top end, billionaires, centimillionaires, are not tacked seriously, they get richer, everyone else gets poorer. So the government's job gets significantly more difficult every day, they don't take action here. I think they'll be too slow, they'll end up failing on living standards, inequality will keep rising, living standards will keep getting worse.