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This is Caroline Wheeler from the Sunday Times with The Week in Westminster.

Tis the season to be jolly. The Christmas trees are up and the parties are in full swing.

But you would have to look quite hard to find much festive cheer in Downing Street.

While the country prepares for the holidays, far from looking forward to arrest, the Prime Minister is facing two distinct nightmares before Christmas.

The first is the mood in the Parliamentary Labour Party,

which is increasingly feebrile as speculation swirls around Sarkia Stama's future.

The second nightmare is existential and geopolitical.

European leaders have said intensive work will continue over the coming days

on a US-led plan to end the Russia-Ukraine war.

It comes amid fears the US could scale back support for Ukraine if an

agreement is not struck, as President Trump grows increasingly impatient. At Prime Minister's

questions, the Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davy urged Kirstama to stand up to Donald Trump,

describing the recently published US national security strategy

as deeply alarming. It repeats far-right tropes of civilizational erasure and threatens that the

US government will cultivate resistance in Europe. No wonder Vladimir Putin has welcomed that strategy. So will the Prime

Minister pick up the phones and make it clear to President Trump that any attempts to interfere

with our democracy are totally unacceptable? To discuss developments, I brought together the crossbench peer Kim Darrock, who was

the UK's ambassador to the United States during President Trump's first term, and the

Conservative former Defence Secretary, Sir Grant Shaps.

I began by asking Grant whether he thought anything would come of all the talks on Ukraine.

Eventually, every war comes to an end, and one way or the other, this one will end as well.

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