What If Reform Wins: A Scenario is a pathetically bad book. Badly written in bad faith.

Chappell simply cannot write, so he doesn't dare write either a serious non-fiction exploration of Reform's policies, their implications and their likely outcomes, or a speculative fiction about what a Reform-led government might be like. His cheat is to call this a "scenario" - which in usual writing parlance is the first development of an idea, not the thing you actually publish.

Chappell's repetition (at least once on every page) of "in this scenario" is cumulatively pathetic. A halfway intelligent reader would think, "Okay mate, we got the point on the cover." Most of the book is boring, and the attempts at humour are truly sad. When Lee Anderson, on the verge of actually deporting illegal migrants, goes to a curry house, messes up the table and insults the waiter, we're hardly in Tom Sharpe territory. A real writer would have developed a story about visits to this restaurant, with the chef getting more imaginative in the horrid things he's putting in Anderson's food, and Anderson enjoying the fouled food more every time. Of course, Chappell doesn't have to bother with little things like developing his storyline - the "in this scenario" business gives him all the excuse he needs to be lazy.

The funniest moment is his description of a woman who gets deported as:

"a devout Catholic and St Ignatius church in the village had become her second home. She sits on the parish council, runs a much-loved curry stall at the school fête and was the lead organiser of the church’s St Vincent de Paul Society, which visits isolated old people in the surrounding rural villages. (...) Her grandson has profound and multiple learning disabilities and it is hard to trust anyone else to look after him."

As Wilde says, you must have a heart of stone not to laugh. But Chappell then writes, "she never thought the changes applied to her." Which, to any readers who do not share his sentiment that just about anyone should be allowed to remain in a nation if they so please, regardless of laws and borders, is a red flag.

Combine this with his describing migrants as "engineers" (he's clearly missed the "doctors and engineers" meme online) and the fantasy that the whole country, including Reform's own MPs, would squeal at the mention of remigration, and you get a book by someone who has clearly never met anyone outside his own small echo chamber.

In the end, Chappell's allegiance is clearly more with the EU than Britain, as he cooks up "in this scenario" a tale of the EU bringing Farage down. Sour and angry, Chappell has Farage leaving Downing Street stinking of cigarettes and booze.

This is really cheap and amateur stuff, and my only surprise is that it was published by a mainstream publishing house. Most authors of dross like this would have difficulty persuading themselves that it was worth self-publishing.