Poland Set to ‘Quickly Overtake Britain in Military Strength And Income’

Britain is on course to ending up being a ‘2nd tier’ European nation like Spain or Italy due to financial decline and a weak military that weakens its usefulness to allies, an expert has actually alerted.

Research professor Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning brand-new report that the U.K. has actually been paralysed by low financial investment, high tax and misdirected policies that could see it lose its standing as a top-tier middle power at present .

The stark evaluation weighed that succeeding federal government failures in policy and drawing in investment had actually triggered Britain to lose out on the ‘markets of the future’ courted by developed economies.

‘Britain no longer has the industrial base to logistically sustain a war with a near-peer like Russia for more than 2 months,’ he composed in The Henry Jackson Society’s most current report, Strategic Prosperity: The Case for Economic Growth as a National Security Priority.

The report examines that Britain is now on track to fall behind Poland in terms of per capita earnings by 2030, which the main European country’s armed force will soon surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and devices on the present trajectory.

‘The problem is that once we are devalued to a second tier middle power, it’s going to be virtually impossible to return. Nations don’t return from this,’ Dr Ibrahim told MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be sped up decline unless we nip this in the bud and have bold leaders who have the ability to make the hard choices right now.’

People pass boarded up shops on March 20, 2024 in Hastings, England

A British soldier refills his rifle on February 17, 2025 in Smardan, Romania

Staff Sergeant Rai utilizes a radio to speak to Archer crews from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery during a live fire range on Rovajärvi Training Area, during Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim welcomed the federal government’s choice to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, however cautioned much deeper, systemic concerns threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a globally influential power.

With a weakening commercial base, Britain’s usefulness to its allies is now ‘falling behind even second-tier European powers’, he warned.

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‘Not just is the U.K. anticipated to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, but also a smaller sized army and one that is unable to sustain deployment at scale.’

This is of particular concern at a time of increased geopolitical stress, with Britain pegged to be amongst the leading forces in Europe’s rapid rearmament project.

‘There are 230 brigades in Ukraine today, Russian and Ukrainian. Not a single European country to install a single heavy armoured brigade.’

‘This is an enormous oversight on the part of subsequent governments, not just Starmer’s problem, of stopping working to invest in our military and essentially contracting out security to the United States and NATO,’ he told MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting fatigue of providing the security umbrella to Europe, Europe now has to stand on its own and the U.K. would have been in a premium position to in fact lead European defence. But none of the European countries are.’

Slowed defence spending and patterns of low productivity are nothing brand-new. But Britain is now also ‘failing to adjust’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based worldwide order, said Dr Ibrahim.

The former consultant to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review noted in the report that in spite of the ‘weakening’ of the organizations as soon as ‘protected’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by damaging the last vestiges of its military may and financial power.

The U.K., he said, ‘appears to be making increasingly costly gestures’ like the ₤ 9bn handover of the tactical Chagos Islands and opening talks on reparations for Caribbean Slavery.

The surrender of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean has actually been the source of much scrutiny.

Negotiations in between the U.K. and Mauritius were begun by the Tories in 2022, but an agreement was revealed by the Labour federal government last October.

Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security think thank alerted at the time that ‘the relocation demonstrates stressing tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government refers to as being characterised by terrific power competitors’.

Require the U.K. to offer reparations for its historic function in the servant trade were rekindled also in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth nations that reparations would not be on the program.

An Opposition 2 primary fight tank of the British forces throughout the NATO’s Spring Storm workout in Kilingi-Nomme, Estonia, Wednesday, May 15, 2024

Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk speak throughout an interview in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

Dr Ibhramin assessed that the U.K. seems to be acting against its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of risk.

‘We understand soldiers and missiles however stop working to fully conceive of the risk that having no alternative to China’s supply chains might have on our ability to react to military aggression.’

He recommended a brand-new security design to ‘improve the U.K.’s strategic dynamism’ based upon a rethink of migratory policy and risk assessment, access to uncommon earth minerals in a market dominated by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and self-reliance through financial investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on atomic energy.

‘Without instant policy modifications to reignite development, Britain will end up being a diminished power, reliant on stronger allies and vulnerable to foreign browbeating,’ the Foreign Policy columnist said.

‘As worldwide financial competition heightens, the U.K. needs to choose whether to accept a bold development agenda or resign itself to irreversible decrease.’

Britain’s commitment to the concept of Net Zero may be laudable, however the pursuit will inhibit growth and unknown tactical objectives, he alerted.

‘I am not saying that the environment is not important. But we just can not manage to do this.

‘We are a nation that has failed to invest in our financial, in our energy facilities. And we have considerable resources at our disposal.’

Nuclear power, consisting of the use of small modular reactors, could be a boon for the British economy and energy self-reliance.

‘But we have actually stopped working to commercialise them and obviously that’s going to take a significant quantity of time.’

Britain did introduce a new financing design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour politicians had actually firmly insisted was essential to finding the money for expensive plant-building jobs.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development firm, has been declared for its grants for little energy-producing business at home, business owners have alerted a broader culture of ‘danger aversion’ in the U.K. suppresses investment.

In 2022, earnings for the poorest 14 million people fell by 7.5%, per the ONS. Pictured: Waterlooville High Street, Waterlooville, Hants

Undated file image of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has actually consistently stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian risk’, permitting the pattern of handled decrease.

But the revival of autocracies on the world phase risks further undermining the rules-based global order from which Britain ‘advantages enormously’ as a globalised economy.

‘The threat to this order … has actually established partially since of the lack of a robust will to defend it, owing in part to ponder foreign attempts to overturn the acknowledgment of the true hiding risk they pose.’

The Trump administration’s cautioning to NATO allies in Europe that they will have to do their own bidding has actually gone some way towards waking Britain as much as the seriousness of purchasing defence.

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is insufficient. He urged a top-down reform of ‘essentially our entire state’ to bring the ossified state back to life and sustain it.

‘Reforming the welfare state, reforming the NHS, reforming pensions – these are essentially bodies that use up enormous quantities of funds and they’ll simply keep growing considerably,’ he told MailOnline.

‘You could double the NHS budget plan and it will actually not make much of a damage. So all of this will require fundamental reform and will take a lot of nerve from whomever is in power because it will make them unpopular.’

The report details recommendations in radical tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a restored focus on protecting Britain’s function as a leader in state-of-the-art markets, energy security, and worldwide trade.

Vladimir Putin consults with the guv of Arkhangelsk area Alexander Tsybulsky during their conference at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, March 11, 2025

File picture. Britain’s financial stagnation might see it soon end up being a ‘second tier’ partner

Boarded-up shops in Blackpool as more than 13,000 shops closed their doors for great in 2024

Britain is not alone in falling behind. The Trump administration’s insistence that Europe spend for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire scenario after decades of slow growth and reduced costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research evaluated at the end of last year that Euro location economic efficiency has actually been ‘suppressed’ considering that around 2018, highlighting ‘complex challenges of energy dependence, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and moving global trade dynamics’.

There stay profound inconsistencies in between European economies; German deindustrialisation has actually struck services difficult and forced redundancies, while Spain has grown in line with its tourism-focused economy.

This remains vulnerable, nevertheless, with homeowners increasingly agitated by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of inexpensive accommodation and trapped in low paying seasonal tasks.

The Henry Jackson Society is a diplomacy and national security think thank based in the UK.

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