Flash crash strategists spoof voters with an artificial election

A young trader, now dubbed the "Hound of Hounslow" has been charged with manipulating futures markets and contributing to the so-called "flash crash", while operating from a quiet semi-detached house in west London.

The UK election campaign has entered its fifth and penultimate week.

The entire British election was last night revealed to be a scam run by a high-frequency trader in a house in west London, in what investigators are calling a massive manipulation of the market for political futures.

The full scale of the con is still coming to light but stunned UK voters are discovering that what they had thought a six week general election campaign, was in fact a wholly artificial construct driven by an Australian political strategist, Lynton Crosby, now nicknamed the Wolf of Wallaroo. Investigators stress that the Wolf was not solely responsible for the crash in political support for the main parties. They are studying similar activity near other election HQs.

"It's staggering," said one. "Much of what voters were seeing on the news, was in fact part of a web of spoof and misdirection designed to secure a particular market reaction from which the Wolf and his associates could benefit." All the spoof trades were algorithmically controlled and executed in accordance with a grid found in the Wolf's bunker.

One example was the "tartan trade", in which the Wolf maxed out his margin account to buy Sturgeons, in a complex move designed to drive voters into low-yield, safe haven assets such as Camerons. The trade came a week after a suspicious upsurge in orders for futures in Labour leader Ed Miliband, which he planned to cancel before polling day.

The purchase of Sturgeons may however have been one of the Wolf's mistakes, as he forgot to sell them and the price has continued to rise, leading to a collapse of shares in the Union - an asset in which the Conservatives were once heavily invested.

Regulators are now not even sure the election took place. "We know there was meant to be one this year but now we are wondering if it has already happened. They thought of everything, even publishing "fully costed manifestos" full of numbers that fell apart when closely studied."

This theory is bolstered by the fact that over a four week campaign detectives have not found a single example of a chance meeting between a party leader and an ordinary, nonaligned voter. This was particularly surprising given that the Tory prime minister David Cameron explained his distaste for television election debates by saying they got in the way of the real campaign.

Knowing the lack of voter contact might raise suspicion, the Wolf appears to have planned a handful of staged spontaneous skirmishes with voters in the final days of the campaign, with Mr Cameron apparently coming off best in the encounters.

The parties stuck so precisely to a pre-arranged script of slogans that regulators believe their speeches never actually took place but were simply sent at rapid frequency down high speed cables to news outlets and internet sites. An entire domestic kitchen set was built for the Milibands to suggest their down-to-earth nature.

Investigators also found instances of campaign events that did not actually take place. In one case, a speech the prime minister apparently gave to voters was in fact delivered on a phoney set in a corner of an industrial hangar to 30 people retained for such events on zero-hours contracts.

The traders may even have invented an entire political party, the anti-immigrant UK Independence party, to manipulate political futures. Ukip shares performed strongly for a time but were designed to slide at the moment the Tories needed a polling boost. It is possible Nigel Farage, Ukip's leader, was computer generated and algorithmically set to articulate views popular with Conservatives in a bid to depress the Tories' share price ahead of a late purchase order.

Not everyone is convinced. Some see the Wolf as a fall guy for the real mastermind - the so-called Uhlan of Uxbridge - a former associate, also based in west London, with an interest in depressing Cameron shares. Boris Johnson was unavailable for comment on the spike in his share price in recent days.

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