The mother of self-styled Left Wing economics guru Gary Stevenson appears to have questioned his claims about growing up in ‘poverty’ in east London.,
Stevenson, 38, has repeatedly highlighted his apparently impoverished childhood in his bestselling book and his YouTube videos calling for higher taxes for the rich in the UK.
In The Trading Game he detailed how it was ‘crowded to bursting’ in the three-bed family home he shared with his parents and two siblings in Ilford, Essex before he embarked on his glittering career as a City trader.
But MailOnline can reveal that his mother, Lydia, seemed to have a different take on his upbringing in a social media post following the book’s publication last year.
She appeared to contradict his claim in his videos that he ‘grew up in poverty’ by saying that she paid for him to go to university, and he ‘had a stable home life and was and is loved’.
The seminary teacher also insisted that she and her Post Office worker husband Paul had been able to buy their own home while bringing up three children, saying: ‘Yes we scrimped but we were there for them. Though crap happens we did our best.’
Stevenson’s parents, who now live in East Sussex, refused to comment to MailOnline.
But his mother commented on social media in March last year, just two weeks after her son’s book was published, saying she had a ‘brilliant paid job’.
She wrote: ‘For any of you reading my son’s book I actually paid for him to go through university.
Gary Stevenson, 38, made a video of himself visiting his mother there in November 2021
Stevenson’s parents Paul and Lydia. His mother appeared to contradict his claim in his videos that he ‘grew up in poverty’ by saying that she paid for him to go to university
‘He was the only one of my children who I did pay to go through uni as the other two paid their uni fees with loans and did that for themselves. He has and is helping them financially.
‘But I had a brilliant paid job and was able with my hubby to buy our house. Gary had a stable home life and was and is loved.
‘I didn’t make the cut in his book…. the pressure on him was extraordinary… I’m looking forward to reading his book.
‘I haven’t had chance as his dad has been reading the book, finished it just and I am a Seminary teacher at church so spend all my time at present prepping for that every week.’
Mrs Stevenson said at the time she was planning to read the tome in the summer in order ‘to get to know my son better’.
Her comments paint a different picture to Stevenson’s repeated claims of his impoverished upbringing living in a tiny home overlooking the railway tracks.
Stevenson even made a point in his book of revealing that his house did not have a shower, and he had to connect a rubber hose to the taps of the bath to provide water for a showerhead to wash his hair.
He previously told how he saw little of his father growing up because he had to get up so early in the morning for his humble Post Office job, earning around £20,000 a year.
The tiny three bedroom mid-terraced house in Ilford, Essex, that popular economist Gary Stevenson grew up in with his parents, brother and sister
Gary Stevenson (far left) stands in front of the house as a teen wearing a grey hoodie and a scarf
His book and his videos detail how he had a humble upbringing living with his parents (pictured), his brother and sister in a tiny three bedroom mid-terraced house
Lydia’s comments paint a different picture to Stevenson’s repeated claims of his impoverished upbringing living in a tiny home overlooking the railway tracks
The Victorian house which his parents left when they moved out in 2021 is now in a state of disrepair
The home failed to sell at an auction earlier this month, despite having a relatively modest guide price of only £340,000
The house appeared to be in a much better condition when Stevenson made a video of himself visiting his mother there in November 2021
Stevenson who still has an East End accent and prefers wearing hoodies and sportswear to business suits, says: ‘It’s not a big house, but it meant a lot to me. It was small and crowded with five people, but it’s where I lived’
Stevenson stated in his book: ‘The knowledge of money and the knowledge that we didn’t have much of it, was something I always felt deeply’.
He remembered the anguish he felt when he lost a pound coin that his parents had given him to buy lemonade from a local Esso garage.
Stevenson also detailed how he showed an early aptitude for capitalism at the age of 12 when he started selling penny sweets and then began a paper round when he was 13, earning £13 a week.
But his money-making schemes imploded when he was expelled from his grammar school at the age of 16 after being caught selling cannabis worth £3.
As a result, he had to study at home for his GCSEs, even though he did not have his own desk, which led to him using a plank of wood on the living room floor as a makeshift place to write.
Describing the house as ‘often pretty crowded’, he remembered his childhood playing Mega Drive computer games like Sonic The Hedgehog, but still working hard enough to get eight A* GCSEs and three A grades.
Stevenson was also less than complimentary about his mother, describing her in his book as ‘always wild and insane’ and adding in another passage: ‘I’m not sure why we were never really close’.
Stevenson spoke about his impoverished upbringing in his bestselling book The Trading Game
Stevenson was a former financial trader who made his fortune at Citibank before burning out and retiring to become a social justice campaigner
Stevenson spoke outside the Treasury on Tuesday (pictured) to demand new wealth taxes ahead of chancellor Rachel Reeves’ Spring Statement
Popular economist Gary Stevenson grew up in poverty in Ilford in the shadow of Canary Wharf but rose to become a successful trader at CItibank
He beat the odds to win a place at the London School of Economics and repeatedly compared his working class background and taste in clothes to other rich and connected students at the prestigious university.
Describing the success of his initial internship when he earned £700 a week for doing little more than going out to buy burgers for lunch for his colleagues, he revealed he was invited on a ski trip.
He ended the chapter with what some might regard as a barbed comment about his mother, saying: ‘My mum texted me. ‘Does that mean you got the job then?’ ”I’m not sure probably”. Then she asked for money’.
While detailing his life eating out at up-market restaurants most nights at a time when he was still living at home in Ilford, he admitted seeing little of his family.
One passage said: ‘And in the few evenings when I went to have dinner with my actual parents, they’d harass me for rent, and they’d ask me for money to fix the car.
‘And I did have to give them the car money, but I told my mum that I was paying rent to my dad, and I told my dad that I was giving it to my mum, and neither of them realised that for ages, and everything felt like it was coming together in the world.’
When he was awarded his first ever bonus of £13,000, colleagues told him he had to buy a ‘treat’ for his parents, so he bought his father a Sky Sports subscription.
But he said it led to his father sitting at home watching TV on Saturday afternoons while he went to the gym, instead of going with him to Leyton Orient games.
He added in a passage which could be considered a cruel gesture: ‘I cancelled that subscription a year later, the day I left home’. Stevenson justified his actions at the time, saying that the only thing he ‘really cared about’ was making profits for the bank.
In another cryptic passage when he was contemplating leaving the bank, after his bonuses had made him a multi-millionaire, he described flying home from his posting in Tokyo ‘to see my mum’.
He wrote: ‘I’m not sure why we were never really close. I took her out for a ride, on the little black Vespa I bought with my first bonus, all the way through central London to Regent’s Park.
‘We took a walk through the gardens and round the lake. I asked her why she’d never learned to play guitar. She looked at me strange. Everyone seemed to look at me strange back then. The she asked me, “Gary, are you OK?” And I said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know me, I’m always OK”.’
MailOnline previously revealed that his family home which parents left when they moved out in 2021 is now in a state of disrepair and failed to sell at an auction earlier this month, despite having a relatively modest guide price of only £340,000.
Auctioneers’ pictures of the interior of the house show it in mid-restoration with bare floorboards, tatty curtains, a tired looking kitchen and tiles ripped from the bathroom walls in preparation for a makeover.
The house appeared to be in a much better condition when Stevenson made a video of himself visiting his mother there in November 2021, showing the cramped bedroom which he shared with his brother as a child, as he recalled that he had the lower bunk.
Stevenson added: ‘It’s not a big house, but it meant a lot to me. It was small and crowded with five people, but it’s where I lived.’
Mrs Stevenson’s apparent watering down of her son’s claims follows criticism of Stevenson making factually incorrect assertions when he was a panellist on BBC Question Time last week and called for multi-millionaires and billionaires to face higher taxes.
In answer to the question, ‘Who should plug the deficit, benefit claimants or billionaires?’, he accused the richest in society of ‘getting richer’ at the expense of the middle and working classes.
He wrongly claimed that the UK had a wealth tax ‘in the 50s, the 60s and 70s’ which helped enable people like his grandfather who worked as a bus conductor to ‘buy houses, have financial security, have pensions, have retirements, go on holidays.’
Stevenson, who has 1.1million followers on his YouTube channel Garys Economics, left Citibank in 2014 to study for an economics MPhil at Oxford University after working in Tokyo.
