With Nato adrift and Brussels snubbed, is the UK the key to Europe's response to Trump?

In a fast-moving crisis, the EU has not been nimble enough. The onus must now fall on 'coalitions of the willing' to stop a US-Putin carve-up

- Simon Tisdall

At moments of great crisis, national leaders and governments generally put their countries' (and their own) interests first. Transnational geopolitical, economic and security alliances are all very well. But if such organisations do not or cannot rise to the urgent challenges of the day, they risk being bypassed, ignored or shunted aside. This is the predicament now facing the European Union.

After Donald Trump's appalling treatment of Volodymyr Zelenskyy in full view of the watching world on Friday night, all agree that the US president's betrayal of Ukraine, sickening embrace of Russia and his blunt demand that Europe henceforth defend itself represent just such an extraordinary challenge, and one that must be swiftly addressed.

Three developments stand out. One is that Europe's national leaders are taking charge of crisis management, pushing the EU Commission and, to a lesser degree, US-led Nato to one side.

A second phenomenon is the Trump administration's unprecedented hostility to the EU as an institution. Trump says the EU was created to "screw" the US - a bizarre claim even by his semi-deranged standards. Now he is threatening 25% tariffs on EU imports. He is determined to exclude Brussels from talks on Ukraine. Yet he insists Europe must guarantee any future peace.

The third, linked, development is the way Britain is unexpectedly being drawn back into the centre of European affairs after nearly a decade of self-imposed estrangement. The need to repair the folly of Brexit has never been so glaringly obvious. At the same time, Trump wants to use the UK not as a bridge, as Keir Starmer would like, but as a wedge to weaken and divide Europe.