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

Britain is on course to becoming a ‘second tier’ European nation like Spain or Italy due to economic decline and a weak armed force that weakens its usefulness to allies, an expert has actually alerted.

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

The plain evaluation weighed that succeeding federal government failures in policy and attracting financial investment had caused Britain to miss out on out on the ‘industries 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 two 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 assesses that Britain is now on track to fall behind Poland in regards to per capita earnings by 2030, which the central European nation’s military will quickly go beyond the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and equipment on the current trajectory.

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

‘This is going to be sped up decrease unless we nip this in the bud and have vibrant leaders who have the ability to make the tough decisions right now.’

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

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

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

Dr Ibrahim invited the federal government’s decision to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, however alerted much deeper, systemic problems threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a worldwide prominent power.

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

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

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

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

‘This is a massive oversight on the part of subsequent federal governments, not just Starmer’s problem, of failing to purchase our military and basically 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 needs to stand on its own and the U.K. would have remained in a premium position to really lead European defence. But none of the European nations are.’

Slowed defence costs and patterns of low performance are absolutely nothing brand-new. But Britain is now also ‘failing to change’ to the Trump administration’s shock to the rules-based global order, said Dr Ibrahim.

The previous advisor to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review kept in mind in the report that in spite of the ‘weakening’ of the organizations when ‘protected’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by damaging the last vestiges of its military might and financial power.

The U.K., he said, ‘seems 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 started by the Tories in 2022, however an arrangement was revealed by the Labour federal government last October.

Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security believe thank cautioned at the time that ‘the relocation shows fretting strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government explains as being characterised by terrific power competition’.

Calls for the U.K. to supply reparations for its historical role in the servant trade were revived likewise in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer said ahead of a conference of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the agenda.

A Challenger 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 throughout an interview in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

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

‘We comprehend soldiers and rockets however stop working to completely develop of the threat that having no option to China’s supply chains may have on our ability to react to military aggression.’

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

‘Without instant policy modifications to reignite growth, Britain will become a diminished power, reliant on stronger allies and susceptible to foreign coercion,’ the Foreign Policy writer said.

‘As worldwide economic competitors magnifies, the U.K. needs to choose whether to welcome a bold growth agenda or resign itself to irreparable decline.’

Britain’s commitment to the idea of Net Zero might be admirable, however the pursuit will inhibit growth and unknown strategic objectives, he cautioned.

‘I am not stating that the environment is not important. But we merely can not afford to do this.

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

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

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

Britain did introduce a brand-new financing model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour political leaders had insisted was key to finding the money for pricey plant-building jobs.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development firm, has been heralded for its grants for little energy-producing companies in your home, business owners have cautioned a wider culture of ‘danger hostility’ in the U.K. suppresses financial investment.

In 2022, earnings for the poorest 14 million individuals 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 failed to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian hazard’, enabling the pattern of managed decrease.

But the resurgence of autocracies on the world phase threats further undermining the rules-based international order from which Britain ‘benefits immensely’ as a globalised economy.

‘The danger to this order … has developed partially since of the lack of a robust will to safeguard it, owing in part to ponder foreign attempts to subvert the acknowledgment of the real lurking danger they position.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim alerted that this is not enough. He urged a top-down reform of ‘essentially our entire state’ to bring the ossified state back to life and sustain it.

‘Reforming the well-being state, reforming the NHS, reforming pensions – these are essentially bodies that take up tremendous quantities of funds and they’ll simply keep growing significantly,’ he told MailOnline.

‘You could double the NHS budget plan and it will truly not make much of a damage. So all of this will need fundamental reform and will take a great deal of courage from whomever is in power because it will make them out of favor.’

The report outlines recommendations in radical tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a restored focus on securing Britain’s role as a leader in high-tech markets, energy security, and global trade.

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

File photo. Britain’s financial stagnancy might see it quickly end up being a ‘second tier’ partner

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

Britain is not alone in falling behind. The Trump administration’s persistence that Europe spend for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s alarming situation after years of sluggish development and decreased spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research evaluated at the end of last year that Euro location financial efficiency has actually been ‘subdued’ considering that around 2018, illustrating ‘complex difficulties of energy reliance, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and shifting global trade .

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

This remains vulnerable, however, with residents increasingly upset by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of budget-friendly lodging and trapped in low paying seasonal jobs.

The Henry Jackson Society is a foreign policy and nationwide security think thank based in the United Kingdom.

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