Dear Donald Trump: Thank You for Everything (Truly)

A thank you letter for fuel poverty, rising mortgages, and the economic consequences now landing at your front door.

Photo by 戸山 神奈 on Unsplash

Dear Donald, whose beneficence knows no borders,

I am writing this letter today as a thank you to the all-Glorious Donald J. Trump - who we have been told multiple times, is not thanked nearly enough.

And I must confess, I feel a deep and personal shame that I have not, until this morning, properly expressed the true depth of my sincere gratitude. It is not every day that a single man manages to so comprehensively reshape the global economy, destabilise allied nations, embolden adversaries, and still find the emotional bandwidth to ask, with genuine confusion, why everyone seems a little… tense.

So let me begin, properly, on my knees - metaphorically, of course, though I do suspect you would gleefully accept the literal version - to offer thanks befitting your stature.

Thank you for the war.

Not just any war - but one executed with the impulsive bravado that turns a regional flashpoint into a global economic event within days. Historians will no doubt struggle to categorise it. Was it strategy? Was it theatre? Was it an elaborate attempt to see what happens when you kick a hornet’s nest that also controls 20% of global energy supply?

We may never know - and isn’t that the beauty of it?

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran who you have so thoughtfully launched this war on - that delightful little bottleneck - has been nothing short of inspirational. Shipping collapsing by nearly 95%. Tankers drifting like confused bath ducks. Insurance premiums spiking. Energy markets convulsing like they’ve just seen a ghost. Chef’s kiss!

It takes a visionary to create that kind of immediate, cascading and catastrophic disruption. Vision - and a truly heroic indifference to repercussions.

And the repercussions! Oh, the repercussions.

I am, of course, writing to you from the United Kingdom - that quaint little ally you have spent the past year alternately ignoring, berating, and shaking down like a vaguely disappointing vending machine in a Trump Hotel lobby.

Your war has gifted British households a thrilling new financial experience: the July cliff edge.

Energy bills rising by £160, £250, perhaps £344 - and, for those of us who enjoy an even more premium crisis experience, the possibility of £2,500 annual bills if things really take off.

This all of course serves as much needed reminder for all of us in the UK that comfort is fleeting and that central heating, much like geopolitical stability, should never be taken for granted.

I mean, who isn’t positively gripped with the excitement of seeing nearly 13 million households in this country spending more than 10% of their income on energy? They have clearly had a far too easy run of it!

Front page coverage of the UK impact of the Iran conflict (The Mirror, 18 March 2026)

But let’s not be negative, I am almost certain someone will be along to tell us all about just how character building the suffering will be.

A special note of appreciation for your outreach to rural Britain.

Those 1.5 million households reliant on heating oil - unprotected, exposed, gloriously vulnerable - have seen their costs double since your extremely well thought out Epic Fury adventure kicked off. Double.

No need for messy regulatory buffers or tedious consumer protections. Just a clean, elegant doubling, delivered directly from your decision-making to their front doors.

Efficiency like that is truly rare.

Petrol prices, too, have risen - and will rise further - ensuring that every commute, every school run, every late-night dash to Tesco carries with it a small, fragrant hint of your foreign policy.

There is something beautifully democratic about it - absolutely no one is spared.

Everyone contributes, almost to the point that it’s borderline socialist, and I can only imagine the barely contained excitement rippling through global oil and gas boardrooms right now - champagne trembling in cut-glass flutes as projected windfalls tick ever upward - a rare moment where geopolitical chaos, human anxiety, and quarterly earnings align so beautifully.

Your largesse, however, is not merely limited to what keeps us warm and productive - no, no, your golden touch will be reaching our finances even more directly in the form of mortgages.

Before your intervention, there was a dull, technocratic expectation that interest rates might fall. That families might experience relief. Stability. Predictability.

You saw that - and quite rightly thought: abso-fucking-lutely not.

Mortgage rates are surging and deals are vanishing. Borrowers will now be paying roughly £800 more a year.

Hundreds of products pulled from the market. Lenders flinching like startled deer. The housing market collectively asking itself whether now might be a good time to lie down for a bit.

We thought we saw the worst of during our Trussian era, but I am so pleased we get to go back to state of near constant anxiety about whether people will be able to afford to pay for their homes.

Truly. Bravo for taking us four years back.

Bra. Vo!

And while we’re chipping away at the very bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy, there’s another aspect we simply must not overlook for thanks - Food prices! And here, I simply must applaud your commitment to the slow burn.

This is not a crude, immediate shock - oh no, this one is delightfully layered.

Fertiliser costs are now rapidly rising because of disrupted supply routes. Greenhouses have suddenly become more expensive to heat. Shipping times have been extended. Fuel costs embedded into everything from bread to beef.

We now get to look forward to a creeping and inevitable rise in grocery bills that will peak just in time for autumn - because timing, as ever, is everything.

Industry, meanwhile, has been invited to participate in what we might generously call a “live-fire exercise”.

British manufacturers - already tenderised by years of post-Brexit “frictionless trade” - are now dealing with energy costs that make the concept of “profit” feel almost nostalgic.

Firms talking about “survival mode.” Gas bills jumping by £100,000 a month for forges. Entire sectors quietly wondering whether existence is, in fact, optional.

But again - opportunity. Reinvention. Perhaps steelmaking can pivot to vibes?

All of this unfolding against the gentle backdrop of an economy that was already… let’s say, not entirely thriving.

Flat growth. Fragile forecasts. Inflation only just behaving itself.

Now?

Stagflation looms. Growth stalls. Prices rise. Bond yields climb. Fiscal headroom evaporates.

Yaaaaay!

But truly, Donald, the moment that will stay with me - the moment that elevates this entire saga - is what came next.

After fourteen months of tariffs, insults, and the occasional diplomatic slap across the face…

After treating allies like inconvenient extras in the grand production of You…

After shaking down the UK for pharmaceutical concessions that will cost the NHS billions, sneering at European leaders, and, in the case of London’s mayor, turning him into a recurring punchline…

You turned to us.

And you asked for help.

Help to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Help to stabilise the markets. Help to fix the very thing you had just, with such flair, broken. It was a moment of magnificence.

And through it all, your consistency has been remarkable.

While “allies” of the United States absorb the shock, tighten their belts, and quietly reprice their entire economies…

You have gone out of your way, time and time again, to extend understanding - nay generosity - toward Vladimir Putin.

Casting doubt on Ukraine. Rolling back sanctions in what will be just a wonderful unexpected economic gift to Russia. Berating their wartime leader in public for a dress sense you found insulting. Creating a geopolitical environment that is, if nothing else, extremely comfortable for Moscow.

It is truly a bold strategy: destabilise your friends, reassure your rivals, and then act terribly surprised when the room feels a bit awkward.

Of course, you are not without your admirers here in the UK.

Nigel Farage, for example, continues to gaze upon your work with the kind of misty-eyed devotion usually reserved for royal weddings or a god-like figure descending an escalator.

One imagines him watching energy bills rise, mortgages spike, and food prices creep upward, gently nodding and whispering, “Yes… but look at the sovereignty.”

There is something almost touching about it. A man so intesnely committed to the aesthetic of disruption that he no longer requires it to produce anything remotely beneficial.

So yes, Donald. Thank you.

Thank you for the higher bills, the tighter budgets, the creeping anxiety and the quiet recalculations happening in millions of homes across the United Kingdom today.

Thank you for reminding us that global instability is not an abstract concept but something that arrives, uninvited, in the form of a larger direct debit and a smaller weekly shop.

Thank you for the tariffs, the insults, the transactional diplomacy, and the breathtaking pivot from disdain to dependence the moment things became inconvenient.

And thank you, most of all, for expecting gratitude in return.

That is, in its own way, the most impressive achievement of all.

I remain, as ever,

prostrate, grateful, and in continued awe of your uniquely beneficent approach to global stability.