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

Britain is on course to becoming a ‘2nd tier’ European country like Spain or Italy due to economic decline and a weak military that undermines its usefulness to allies, an expert has actually alerted.

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

The stark assessment weighed that succeeding government failures in regulation and drawing in financial investment had triggered Britain to miss out on the ‘industries of the future’ courted by established 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 wrote 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 back Poland in terms of per capita earnings by 2030, which the central European country’s military will quickly surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and devices on the existing trajectory.

‘The problem is that once we are downgraded to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be virtually impossible to get back. Nations don’t come back 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 are able to make the hard decisions 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 uses a radio to talk to Archer crews from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery during a live fire variety on Rovajärvi Training Area, throughout Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim invited the government’s choice to increase defence costs to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, however warned much deeper, systemic issues threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a worldwide prominent power.

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

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‘Not only is the U.K. forecasted to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, but likewise a smaller sized army and one that is not able to sustain implementation at scale.’

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

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

‘This is a massive oversight on the part of subsequent federal governments, not just Starmer’s issue, of stopping working to purchase our military and essentially contracting out security to the United States and NATO,’ he told MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting tiredness of supplying the security umbrella to Europe, Europe now has to stand on its own and the U.K. would have remained in a premium position to actually lead European defence. But none of the European nations are.’

Slowed defence costs and patterns of low efficiency are nothing new. But Britain is now also ‘stopping working to change’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based worldwide order, stated Dr Ibrahim.

The former consultant to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review kept in mind in the report that in spite of the ‘weakening’ of the institutions once ‘protected’ by the U.S., Britain is reacting by harming the last vestiges of its military might and financial power.

The U.K., he said, ‘appears to be making increasingly expensive gestures’ like the ₤ ۹bn 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 examination.

Negotiations between the U.K. and Mauritius were begun by the Tories in 2022, however an arrangement was announced by the Labour government last October.

Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security think thank alerted at the time that ‘the relocation shows stressing tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government explains as being characterised by fantastic power competition’.

Calls for the U.K. to offer reparations for its historical function in the slave trade were rekindled also in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a conference of Commonwealth nations that reparations would not be on the program.

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

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

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

‘We comprehend soldiers and rockets but stop working to totally develop of the threat that having no alternative to China’s supply chains might have on our ability to react to military aggressiveness.’

He suggested a new security model to ‘enhance the U.K.’s tactical dynamism’ based upon a rethink of migratory policy and hazard evaluation, access to unusual earth minerals in a market controlled by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and independence via financial investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on nuclear energy.

‘Without immediate policy modifications to reignite growth, Britain will become a diminished power, reliant on more powerful allies and susceptible to foreign coercion,’ the Foreign Policy columnist said.

‘As global economic competitors intensifies, the U.K. needs to decide whether to embrace a bold growth program or resign itself to permanent decline.’

Britain’s dedication to the concept of Net Zero may be admirable, however the pursuit will prevent development and obscure tactical objectives, he warned.

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

‘We are a nation that has failed to purchase our financial, in our energy infrastructure. And we have significant resources at our disposal.’

Nuclear power, including the usage of small modular reactors, might be a boon for the British economy and energy independence.

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

Britain did present a new funding model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour political leaders had actually insisted was crucial to finding the cash for expensive plant-building jobs.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation firm, has been heralded for its grants for little energy-producing companies in the house, entrepreneurs have warned a larger culture of ‘threat aversion’ in the U.K. stifles financial investment.

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

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

Britain has regularly stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian danger’, permitting the pattern of handled decrease.

But the renewal of autocracies on the world phase dangers even more weakening the rules-based global order from which Britain ‘advantages enormously’ as a globalised economy.

‘The hazard to this order … has actually developed partially due to the fact that of the absence of a robust will to protect it, owing in part to ponder foreign efforts to overturn the recognition of the real prowling danger they present.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim alerted that this is not enough. He prompted a top-down reform of ‘basically 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 amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing significantly,’ 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 need basic reform and will take a great deal of courage from whomever is in power since it will make them unpopular.’

The report outlines recommendations in extreme tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a restored concentrate on securing Britain’s role as a leader in modern industries, energy security, and international trade.

Vladimir Putin talks with the guv of Arkhangelsk region Alexander Tsybulsky throughout their conference at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, March 11, 2025

File picture. Britain’s economic stagnation could see it soon become a ‘2nd tier’ partner

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

Britain is not alone in falling back. The Trump administration’s insistence that Europe spend for its own defence has cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire situation after decades of slow development and decreased spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of in 2015 that Euro area economic performance has actually been ‘subdued’ because around 2018, illustrating ‘complex obstacles of energy dependence, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and shifting worldwide trade characteristics’.

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

This stays delicate, nevertheless, with homeowners significantly agitated by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of lodging and trapped in low paying seasonal tasks.

The Henry Jackson Society is a foreign policy and nationwide security believe thank based in the UK.

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