Poland Set to ‘Quickly 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 effectiveness to allies, a specialist has actually warned.

Research teacher Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning 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 existing growth rates.

The plain assessment weighed that succeeding federal government failures in regulation and bring in financial investment had actually triggered Britain to lose out on the ‘markets of the future’ courted by developed economies.

‘Britain no longer has the commercial 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 latest report, Strategic Prosperity: The Case for Economic Growth as a National Security Priority.

The report assesses that Britain is now on track to fall back Poland in terms of per capita income by 2030, and that the main European nation’s military will quickly exceed the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and devices on the existing trajectory.

‘The issue is that when we are reduced to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be practically impossible to return. Nations do not 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 strong leaders who have the ability to make the challenging 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 utilizes a radio to talk to Archer teams from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery throughout a live fire variety on Rovajärvi Training Area, during Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

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

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

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

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

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

‘This is an enormous oversight on the part of subsequent federal governments, not just Starmer’s problem, of failing to purchase our military and basically outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting fatigue of providing 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 in fact lead European defence. But none of the European nations are.’

Slowed defence spending and patterns of low performance are absolutely nothing new. But Britain is now also ‘stopping working to change’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based international order, said 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 organizations as soon as ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by damaging the last vestiges of its military may and economic power.

The U.K., he said, ‘appears to be making significantly 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 been the source of much examination.

Negotiations between the U.K. and Mauritius were begun by the Tories in 2022, however a contract was revealed 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 move shows stressing tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government refers to as being characterised by excellent power competitors’.

Calls for the U.K. to provide reparations for its historic role in the slave trade were rekindled likewise in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a conference of Commonwealth nations that reparations would not be on the agenda.

A Challenger 2 main battle tank of the British forces throughout the NATO’s Spring 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 examined that the U.K. seems to be acting versus its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of threat.

‘We comprehend soldiers and missiles however fail to completely develop of the danger 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 dominated 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 immediate policy changes to reignite development, Britain will become a lessened power, reliant on more powerful allies and vulnerable to foreign browbeating,’ the Foreign Policy columnist stated.

‘As international economic competitors intensifies, the U.K. should choose whether to welcome a strong growth agenda or resign itself to irreparable decline.’

Britain’s commitment to the idea of Net Zero may be admirable, however the pursuit will prevent development and unknown tactical goals, he warned.

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

‘We are a country that has actually stopped working to invest in our financial, in our energy facilities. And we have considerable resources at our disposal.’

Nuclear power, consisting of making use of small modular reactors, might be a benefit for the British economy and energy independence.

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

Britain did introduce a new financing model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour political leaders had actually insisted was crucial to finding the money for costly plant-building tasks.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development firm, has been declared for its grants for little energy-producing business in your home, entrepreneurs have warned a larger culture of ‘risk aversion’ 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 actually regularly stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian hazard’, permitting the trend of managed decline.

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

‘The threat to this order … has developed partly because of the lack of a robust will to defend it, owing in part to deliberate foreign efforts to subvert the recognition of the real hiding threat they posture.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is insufficient. He advised 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 basically bodies that use up enormous quantities of funds and they’ll just keep growing considerably,’ he told MailOnline.

‘You might double the NHS spending plan and it will actually not make much of a dent. So all of this will require essential reform and will take a great deal of guts from whomever is in power due to the fact that it will make them out of favor.’

The report outlines recommendations in extreme tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a renewed focus on protecting Britain’s function as a leader in modern industries, energy security, and global trade.

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

File photo. Britain’s financial stagnation might see it soon end up being a ‘2nd tier’ partner

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

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

The Centre for Economic Policy Research assessed at the end of in 2015 that Euro area economic performance has actually been ‘subdued’ given that around 2018, illustrating ‘complex difficulties of energy dependence, making vulnerabilities, and shifting global trade dynamics’.

There remain extensive discrepancies between European economies; German deindustrialisation has actually hit services difficult and forced redundancies, while Spain has grown in line with its tourism-focused economy.

This remains vulnerable, however, with residents increasingly agitated by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of affordable 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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