The Renaissance Girl 🇬🇧🇬🇱🇺🇦

I met @lang_lang in Paris 🤯🎹 Today I was playing piano at Gate de Lyon when something incredible happened... Thank you @SteinwayAndSons for allowing us to play piano in the best condition on your amazing two upright pianos!

For the first time in this war, NATO command just came to Ukraine. Not to teach. To learn. Ukraine is now part of their exercises - playing the enemy because we understand this war better than anyone. Turns out, we’re not just asking for security anymore. We are the ones providing it.

Was it for this that the US spent 80 years building power and alliances? Not to be a force for good. But instead to impoverish neighbours, threaten those it protected, rob minerals from war-torn countries, and break its promises to 100s of millions of the poorest in the world? 🧵

I have a friend in Cuba and what they just reported should end careers in Washington. Every single patient on a ventilator in their hospital died tonight. The power went out. The ventilators stopped. This isn't a rare incident anymore. Cuba's grid has collapsed 3 times THIS MONTH. The hospital staff told them they've had more emergency deaths in the last 30 days than in all of last year combined. A patient with leukemia at a Havana hospital told reporters: "Without fuel or affordable transportation, life has only gotten harder. We are fighting every day." NICU babies are on bare minimum power right now. Dialysis patients are playing Russian roulette with every blackout. Cuba has received ZERO oil in 3 months. That's not a shortage. That's a blockade. The US blocked a Russian rescue mission — 730,000 barrels of oil heading to Cuba — turned it away. Then the official story went: "We're sending $6 million in humanitarian aid." $6 million in aid. 930,000 barrels of oil blocked. You can't fix ventilators with $6 million when the grid is dark. And Trump's own words from March 6, 2026: "Cuba will fall. After 50 years, this is the cherry on top of the cake." The people dying in hospitals tonight are his cherry on top. I'll keep you updated. Turn on notifications. 🚨

The news that Orbán’s people inform Moscow about EU Council meetings in every detail shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. We’ve had our suspicions about that for a long time. That’s one reason why I take the floor only when strictly necessary and say just as much as necessary.

Let me explain the sinister nature of what Trump actually does to people. He asks: are you loyal to me? Yes. Good. No forever wars. Are you with me? Yes. No forever wars. Then he starts the wars. And now he needs you to be with him on the wars too. And then the Epstein files come out. Allegations involving children. And he needs you to look the other way on that too. That’s the mechanism. That’s how it works. He moves the goalposts incrementally. Each ask is slightly more compromising than the last. And by the time you realize how far you’ve traveled from your own principles you are so deep in that you can’t find your way back. Loyalty to Trump doesn’t mean loyalty to an idea or a policy or a vision for the country. It means asymmetric, unconditional, no-questions-asked loyalty to whatever he decides is true today. You have to understand the sinister nature of that to understand what is really happening in Washington right now. This isn’t politics. This is a loyalty trap.

"Sometimes, you have to escalate to deescalate." — Walther Funk, German Reich Minister of Economics, 1941 "Sometimes, you have to escalate to deescalate." — Scott Bessent, U.S. Treasury Secretary, 2026

In 2023, @KemiBadenoch hosted an Iftar at Lancaster House. I was there. Here’s what happened: • Call to prayer ✔️ • Men and women prayed separately ✔️ • She stayed, participated, ate food, and raised no issue ✔️ Fast forward to now and she claims Ramadan events with gender-separated prayer are “wrong” and should never have happened. So what changed? Not the practice. Not the format. Just the politics and her principles. If it was acceptable when she was in government hosting diplomats and business leaders, why is it suddenly “wrong” when it involves ordinary British Muslims? You can’t have it both way

Here’s Rory Stewart talking a lot of sense about the Iran war: “We need to get out immediately. Every day this continues, it gets closer to a global economic meltdown and closer to a much bigger conflict and the beginnings of a third world war.”

Here’s the question nobody in Washington is asking about the Diego Garcia strike: how did Iran know exactly where to aim? They don’t have satellite coverage of the Indian Ocean. Someone gave them the targeting data. Who? And what does that make this war?

Got to say, if the research of Goodwin's book was conducted mainly by AI, then he's done a terrible job of hiding it

EXC: .@GoodwinMJ’s new book “Suicide of a Nation: Immigration, Islam, Identity” is out now, and I’m only 5 chapters in and have found a huge amount of what appears to be false quotes and basic misinterpretations of data, that appear to be AI hallucinations. Matthew, can you explain the claims you made in the book that I’ve outlined in the below thread?

If only @KemiBadenoch knew even a little history

Statement by President George W. Bush on Robert Mueller: "Laura and I are deeply saddened by the loss of Robert Mueller. Bob dedicated his life to public service. As a Marine in Vietnam, he proved he was ready for tough assignments. He earned a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart before returning home to pursue law. In 2001, only one week into the job as the 6th Director of the F.B.I., Bob transitioned the agency mission to protecting the homeland after September 11. He led the agency effectively, helping prevent another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Laura and I send our heartfelt sympathy to his wife of nearly 60 years, Ann, and the Mueller family."

BREAKING: In a desperate effort to help Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orban, a close ally of the Kremlin, win the April election, where polls show he’s expected to lose, Russia’s foreign intelligence service (SVR) reportedly proposed “the Gamechanger,” a staged assassination attempt to boost support for him, The Washington Post reports. “Such an incident will shift the perception of the campaign out of the rational realm of socioeconomic questions into an emotional one, where the key themes will become state security and the stability and defense of the political system,” operatives wrote in a report prepared for the SVR’s main political influence unit.

It’s not about Valor. It’s about Pharmacies and Gas Bills. 💊⛽️ ​This is the best analysis of the 2026 conflict yet. The link between Indian pharmaceutical manufacturers, Gulf crude, and British gas prices is why HMS Anson is there. If the Strait of Hormuz stays closed, the UK economy collapses. ​This isn't a 'Special Relationship' favor to Trump; it’s a survival move for Starmer. 20% of global oil is on the line. The Tomahawks are just the insurance policy. 📉🚀 #GlobalEconomy #SupplyChain #EnergyCrisis #HMSAnson #BreakingNews

BREAKING. The country President Trump called “very late as usual” just parked a nuclear submarine within Tomahawk range of Iran. HMS Anson, an Astute-class nuclear-powered attack submarine, is now positioned in the northern Arabian Sea with cruise missiles capable of reaching targets deep inside Iranian territory. Britain did not announce this with a press conference. The Daily Mail published the positioning. The submarine speaks for itself. HMS Anson left Perth earlier this month and traveled 5,500 miles to the Arabian Sea. It carries Tomahawk Block IV cruise missiles and Spearfish heavyweight torpedoes. Its Rolls-Royce reactor will not need refuelling for 25 years. Its pump-jet propulsor makes it one of the quietest submarines in any navy. It does not need to surface to strike. It does not need permission from Washington. Starmer authorises launches through Permanent Joint Headquarters at Northwood. This is a British weapon under British command. The sequence matters. On the first day of the war, Iran fired two intermediate-range ballistic missiles at Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian Ocean. Neither hit. Trump publicly criticised the UK as “very late” and “disappointing” in its response. Starmer initially hesitated on US requests to use British bases for strike operations. Then Britain authorised the use of UK bases, including Diego Garcia, for operations to prevent Iran from attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran responded by warning that British lives are now at risk. Britain responded by sending a submarine that can put a Tomahawk through a window in Tehran from underwater without surfacing. The escalation ladder from “very late” to nuclear attack submarine took less than three weeks. Starmer’s calculation is not ideological. It is economic. The UK imports significant quantities of LNG and oil through Gulf supply routes. The Strait of Hormuz carries approximately 20 percent of global seaborne oil trade. British energy prices are already surging from the Hormuz closure. British pharmaceutical supply chains depend on Indian manufacturers who depend on Gulf crude. The same supply-chain vulnerability that connects Modi’s Nowruz phone call to Ohio pharmacies connects Starmer’s submarine deployment to British gas bills. The submarine is not defending democracy. It is defending heating costs. The Astute-class is the most capable attack submarine Britain has ever built. Seven are planned. Five have been commissioned. HMS Anson, the fifth, entered service in 2022. At 97 metres and 7,800 tonnes submerged, it carries a crew of 98 in a hull designed to operate at depths exceeding 300 metres. It is smaller than the American Virginia-class but rated quieter by multiple independent assessments. It carries fewer missiles but needs fewer sailors. In a strait where stealth matters more than volume, the boat that cannot be heard is more dangerous than the fleet that can be seen. The UK is now the third nation with strike capability deployed in the war theatre, after the United States and Israel. France has the Charles de Gaulle carrier group for air operations. Greece has a Patriot battery defending Saudi refineries. Twenty-three nations signed a statement. But only Britain has put a nuclear-powered platform carrying land-attack cruise missiles underwater in the Arabian Sea with the authority to fire them on the Prime Minister’s order. Trump said late. Starmer sent a submarine. The missile it carries can reach Tehran. The reactor that powers it will not need fuel until 2047. And the man who authorises the launch is the same man Iran threatened by name when it said British lives are at risk. The threat was noted. The submarine arrived. Full analysis: open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

Gen. Grynkewich: In Ukraine today, Russia has well over 500,000 troops. Should the war in Ukraine end, we will have to monitor Russian behavior. When 500,000 battle-hardened Russian troops are repositioned to other areas, it will be a potential military threat to the alliance.

I came to Amsterdam to say this without fear: Russia’s hybrid warfare in Africa is intentionally engineered not only to exploit resources and destabilize nations, but also to generate instability that drives large-scale migration toward Europe and weakens EU democracy & cohesion.

UKRAINE IS WINNING. 🇺🇦 Fresh gains in the Dnipropetrovsk region — Russian lines are cracking as the counteroffensive keeps pushing forward. The Dnipro region could soon be 100% free of occupation. History is being written right now. Slava Ukraini. 🫡