Everyone knows UK general elections aren’t what they were. British politics, Westminster in particular, is mired in an integrity crisis. Expenses scandals, cash for questions, a tainted honours system, and other wrong-turns have deeply disillusioned the electorate.

Enter Real Alternative, a bold new party with a youthful, charismatic leader, and a radical manifesto. True, it stands to win very few seats, but what matters more is that it has galvanised the young and apathetic. And apparently, it has the establishment running scared. Yet it may be more vulnerable than appears. Who’s funding it? No one quite knows. If its backers are foreign, that would constitute a clear breach of electoral commission rules. Which would please a lot of people in Whitehall.

Agent John Mordred is assigned to investigate. What looks at first like a routine probe becomes much more when he discovers not only that his own sister is an integral part of Real Alternative’s setup, but that she’s having a relationship with the party leader. And that someone wants both of them dead.

The Social Magus is the first of the Tales of MI7 series to be set mostly in London. Written in the run-up to the 2015 general election, it examines some of the trends and concerns that later materialised in “Corbynism” and the Momentum movement.