The UK is actually run by voracious bears in human costumes, the current management of the once-fashionable North Atlantic island group has admitted.
Popular suspicions were first aroused when the prime minister was discovered to be a hairy 'big beast' called Boris that was always chasing after honeys.
Now footage has emerged of ministers shuffling around Whitehall on all fours, chasing immigrants up trees and looking for public sector picnic baskets to raid.
Political zoologists have welcomed the government's clarification. 'Previously we thought only Russia and the stock exchange were run by bears,' said Professor Griselda Adams, 'although I suspect that Westminster may also be home to a herd of wild pigs with their snouts in the trough.'
Meanwhile, a statement issued by undisguised bears distanced "the ursine community at large" from the "all too human greed and mayhem caused by our suit-clad cousins in London", and hoped they would "return to their natural ways before all our habitats are ruined".