Hedge fund managers make wonderful scapegoats. These mysterious, overpaid characters swaggering through the streets of Mayfair have been blamed for most things over the years. Now they are being called to account for their latest crime - high oil prices.

Never mind the fact that global oil production is sputtering while demand from the developing world soars.

Never mind the fact that official US figures show that speculative bets on rising oil prices actually peaked last July - while oil prices reached their historic high of $135 only last week.

All of this is irrelevant in the face of the urgent need for politicians to respond to mounting public anger over rising fuel prices.

From Washington to Whitehall, Berlin to Tokyo, there is rumbling discontent at the role of wicked “speculators” in manipulating oil prices to new highs.

Regulators have been called in. Summits have been arranged with industry bosses. Ministers have been busy tabling motions. It is not that the oil market does not deserve more public scrutiny or could not sensibly be improved - the real question is whether reforms will make any material difference to prices.

It would be naive to suggest that there is no manipulation. In a market this size, that would be unlikely. Yet it is precisely the size of the market that is the point. The $32 trillion global crude oil market is so big and so liquid that anything more than the most marginal “manipulation” of prices would be beyond even the mightiest hedge fund heavyweights.

Anyone hellbent on market abuse would do far better to look at the smaller and more illiquid markets for liquefied natural gas, jet fuel or propane.

A crackdown on abuses might sound attractive to the struggling commuter.

But it is unlikely to have any material effect, other than to drive more oil trading away from London and New York to more lightly regulated centres.

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