There was both symbolism and substance on Sunday as European leaders and NATO allies gathered in London to try to pick up the pieces after a shattering encounter in the Oval Office between the president of a superpower and a president at war.

The symbolism was of European leaders and NATO allies gathering to stand shoulder to shoulder in a show of solidarity with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, after his mauling in the White House by US President Donald Trump and his vice president JD Vance.

There was also real substance on Sunday as European and NATO allies committed to spending more on defence and stepping up to defend their borders against Russian aggression, with an eye on a US partner which, whatever Sir Keir Starmer might say, Europeans are not sure they can now rely on.

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EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, emerging from over two hours of talks, spoke of the EU plan – to be presented on Thursday – to increase defence spending.

“Member states need more fiscal space to do a surge in defence spending,” she told reporters, adding Europe needed to turn Ukraine “into a steel porcupine that is indigestible for potential invaders”.

NATO secretary general Mark Rutte said he had heard new announcements from European leaders to ramp up defence spending.

After decades of outsourcing its defence to the US and cashing in the post-Cold War peace dividend on health, education and welfare spending, Europe is all too aware that it has entered different times.

Sir Keir has inserted himself into the heart of this endeavour as one of the few leaders – alongside perhaps President Emmanuel Macron of France and Georgia Meloni of Italy – capable of acting as the bridge between the Trump White House and the EU.

A Whitehall source said the prime minister “feels the urgency and knows the unique role he can play”, adding that Sir Keir is “very focused”.

After the blow-up in the White House on Friday which saw the groundwork carefully laid by Sir Keir and Mr Macron to try to secure US security guarantees for Ukraine ripped up, the PM has spent the weekend trying to get it back on track with both Mr Zelenskyy and Mr Trump.

I’m told it involves getting President Zelenskyy back to the table to do the deal, and then persuading European leaders to go beyond Twitter rhetoric and step up on defence spending, preparing now for a world with no US security guarantee for Europe, not just in Ukraine.

Sir Keir told me clearly he does not view the US as an unreliable ally, and that the plan he, Mr Macron and others put together will be presented to Mr Trump and “taken forward together”.

But it is undeniable that Europe will have to step up.

The PM spoke on Sunday of a “coalition of the willing”, made up of nations prepared to defend a deal in Ukraine and to guarantee peace.

“Those willing will intensify planning now with real urgency,” he said, confirming that the UK is “prepared to back this with boots on the ground and planes in the air, together with others”.

The hope is that the commitment from European allies will be enough for the US to provide the last resort backstop if Russian President Vladimir Putin decides to break the terms of any deal. It would involve intelligence and air cover but not boots on the ground.

There is tentative optimism once more in Number 10, knocked sideways by its own diplomatic triumph on Thursday being followed by Mr Zelenskyy’s Washington setback.

“There is still a way to go, but we feel like we’re making progress,” one government source said, while another told me the PM was “pleased at the quality of the discussion at the summit and feels like things are moving forward”.

When I asked another if they were confident they could bind President Trump back in, they said they were “hopeful, not confident”.

Of course, getting talks back on track is only the first hurdle of many.

Even if Sir Keir and Mr Macron can patch things up with Mr Trump and Mr Zelenskyy, what might this peace deal look like, and crucially will Russia, perhaps emboldened by the fracturing of the Western alliance, be less minded to deal or make undeliverable demands?

The PM said on Sunday that it was up to Europeans to set the parameters of a peace deal rather than allow Russia to “dictate the terms of any security guarantees before we’ve even got to a deal”.

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Mr Trump has offered Mr Putin one concession by ruling out Ukraine joining NATO, reversing the stance adopted by his predecessor, Joe Biden.

He also batted away President Zelenskyy’s demand that Ukraine’s borders be restored to pre-conflict lines, saying he would freeze the borders at the point of any ceasefire, meaning Moscow would keep hold of the 20% of Ukrainian territory it had taken since 2022.

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Last week, Mr Trump appeared less clear on this, telling reporters in the Oval Office for Sir Keir’s visit that he would get back Ukrainian land.

In short, even if the Europeans can patch up relations between President Zelenskyy and President Trump, there is an even more complex negotiation to then have with President Putin.

So, there is still quite some distance to travel, but the prime minister closes this week of intense, and fraught diplomacy, with a sense that the UK and other key partners are back on track and, as President Zelenskyy returned to the frontline in Ukraine on Sunday evening, European leaders know they have to deploy all the hard and soft power they have to try to end this war.

Remarkable – and relatively speaking a blessing – that the wake-up call for Britain to take defence seriously again did not come in the form of a military attack on UK soil, but instead was triggered by the verbal assault of Ukraine’s wartime leader by a sitting US president.

The lack of any physical destruction on British streets, though, should fool no one in government or wider society that the framework of security that has protected the country and its allies since the end of the Second World War is not at best cracked and at worst shattered.

Instead, check out one of the latest posts by Elon Musk, Donald Trump’s “disrupter-in-chief”.

He used his social media site X to say “I agree” with a call for the United States to leave NATO – a transatlantic alliance, and the bedrock of European security, that the new administration had until now continued to back at least in public.

It is yet another example of escalating hostility from the new Trump White House – which has sided with Russia against Ukraine, lashed out at its European partners over their values, and even suggested absorbing Canada as the 51st American state.

The alarming mood-change by a nation that is meant to be a friend surely demands an equally dramatic shift in approach by NATO’s 30 European allies and their Canadian partner.

Rather than stating the obvious – that American support can no longer be taken for granted – they should instead be actively adapting to a world in which it fundamentally no longer exists.

Make no mistake, this would be a daunting and humbling prospect – perhaps too awful even to contemplate, in particular for the UK, which has tied itself militarily so closely to the US for pretty much everything from intelligence sharing and technology to nuclear weapons.

Britain is not alone. All European militaries, as well as Canada, to a greater or lesser extent rely heavily on their more powerful American partners.

Breaking that dependency would require a rapid expansion in military capabilities and capacity across the continent, as well as a huge effort to build up the defence industrial base required to produce weapons at scale and exploit emerging technologies.

Sir Keir Starmer – who is hosting a Ukraine summit of allies on Sunday – has rightly adopted the UK’s natural position of leadership in Europe in the wake of Donald Trump’s extraordinary hostility towards Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He gave the embattled Ukrainian president a warm embrace on Saturday when the two met at Downing Street.

Britain is one of Europe’s two nuclear-armed states, a powerful voice within NATO, and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.

But talking tough on defence and the need to support Ukraine as the US steps back is no longer enough in a world where hard power is the only real currency once again.

A pledge by the prime minister to increase defence spending to 2.5% of national income by 2027 and to 3% in the next parliament is of course a step in the right direction.

Yet unless it is accompanied by much greater speed and urgency coupled with a genuinely generational shift in the entire country’s approach to national security then it will go down in history as the headline-grabbing but otherwise empty gesture of a government that has forgotten what it means to be ready to fight wars.

Anneliese Dodds, who quit as international development secretary on Thursday over the prime minister’s plan to fund his increase in defence spending with a raid on the overseas aid budget, summed up the challenge well in her resignation letter.

She wrote that she supported the plan to lift the defence budget but said even 3% “may only be the start, and it will be impossible to raise the substantial resources needed just through tactical cuts to public spending”.

She added: “These are unprecedented times, when strategic decisions for the sake of our country’s security cannot be ducked.”

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Ms Dodds is right.

It is no longer good enough to treat defence, deterrence and wider national resilience as a niche subject that is delivered by an increasingly small, professional military.

Rather, it should once again be at the heart of the thinking of all government departments – from the Treasury and business to health and education – led by the prime minister, his national security adviser and the cabinet secretary.

This is not something new. It was normal during the Cold War years when, after two world wars, the whole country was acutely aware of the need to maintain costly but credible armed forces and a population that was ready to play its part in a crisis.

Sir Keir Starmer has suggested a coalition of European allies could step up and defend a potential deal for Ukraine to “guarantee the peace”.

The prime minister indicated some EU nations could be prepared to increase defence spending to protect any peace deal that is agreed between Ukraine and Russia.

But speaking at summit of EU leaders in central London, Sir Keir acknowledged that no such coalition had yet been formed and that “not every nation will feel able to contribute”.

Instead, he said “those willing” – though he did not state which countries this included – would “intensify planning now with real urgency”.

In a sign this could mean troops from member states being sent to Ukraine, he added: “The UK is prepared to back this with boots on the ground and planes in the air, together with others. Europe must do the heavy lifting.”