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

Britain is on course to becoming a ‘2nd tier’ European nation like Spain or Italy due to financial decrease and a weak military that weakens its effectiveness to allies, a professional 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 might see it lose its standing as a top-tier middle power at existing development rates.

The stark evaluation weighed that succeeding federal government failures in guideline and drawing in financial investment had actually triggered Britain to lose 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 two months,’ he composed in The Henry Jackson Society’s newest 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 income by 2030, which the main European country’s military will soon exceed the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and equipment on the current trajectory.

‘The concern is that as soon as we are downgraded to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be practically difficult to get back. Nations don’t return from this,’ Dr Ibrahim told MailOnline today.

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

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

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

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

Dr Ibrahim welcomed the government’s choice to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, but alerted much deeper, systemic issues threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a worldwide influential power.

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

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‘Not just 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 implementation at scale.’

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

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

‘This is an enormous oversight on the part of subsequent governments, not simply Starmer’s problem, of failing to buy 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 has to base 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 spending and patterns of low efficiency are nothing new. But Britain is now also ‘stopping working to adjust’ to the Trump administration’s shock to the rules-based worldwide order, said Dr Ibrahim.

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

The U.K., he said, ‘appears to be making progressively costly 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 analysis.

Negotiations in between the U.K. and Mauritius were started by the Tories in 2022, but a contract was announced by the Labour federal government last October.

Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security think thank cautioned 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 excellent power competitors’.

Calls for the U.K. to supply 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 agenda.

An Opposition 2 primary battle 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 a press conference in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

Dr Ibhramin assessed that the U.K. appears to be acting versus its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of danger.

‘We understand soldiers and rockets but fail to totally envisage the threat that having no alternative to China’s supply chains may have on our ability to react to military aggressiveness.’

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

‘Without immediate policy modifications to reignite development, Britain will end up being a diminished power, reliant on stronger allies and vulnerable to foreign coercion,’ the Diplomacy writer said.

‘As international financial competitors magnifies, the U.K. needs to choose whether to accept a strong development agenda or resign itself to irreparable decrease.’

Britain’s commitment to the concept of Net Zero might be admirable, however the pursuit will hinder growth and odd strategic goals, he warned.

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

‘We are a nation that has actually failed to buy our economic, in our energy facilities. And we have significant resources at our disposal.’

Nuclear power, including making use of little modular reactors, could be an advantage for the British economy and energy independence.

‘But we’ve failed to commercialise them and clearly that’s going to take a significant quantity of time.’

Britain did introduce a brand-new financing design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour political leaders had actually insisted was crucial to finding the cash for pricey plant-building projects.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development firm, has actually been declared for its grants for small energy-producing business in your home, entrepreneurs have actually cautioned a wider culture of ‘danger aversion’ in the U.K. suppresses financial investment.

In 2022, incomes for the poorest 14 million individuals 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 regularly failed to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian risk’, enabling the pattern of handled decline.

But the resurgence of autocracies on the world stage risks even more weakening the rules-based global order from which Britain ‘benefits tremendously’ as a globalised economy.

‘The threat to this order … has developed partly since of the absence of a robust will to defend it, owing in part to ponder foreign attempts to overturn the recognition of the true hiding risk they present.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim cautioned that this is inadequate. He urged a top-down reform of ‘basically our whole 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 use up tremendous quantities of funds and they’ll just keep growing significantly,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You might double the NHS budget plan and it will really not make much of a dent. So all of this will need basic reform and will take a lot of courage from whomever is in power because it will make them unpopular.’

The report lays out recommendations in radical tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a renewed focus on securing Britain’s function as a leader in modern industries, energy security, and worldwide trade.

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

File image. Britain’s economic stagnancy could see it soon become a ‘second tier’ partner

Boarded-up stores 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 persistence that Europe spend for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s alarming scenario after decades of slow growth and lowered costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of in 2015 that Euro area financial efficiency has actually been ‘suppressed’ given that around 2018, showing ‘multifaceted obstacles of energy dependency, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and moving global trade dynamics’.

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

This stays delicate, however, with homeowners significantly agitated by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of affordable lodging and trapped in low paying seasonal tasks.

The Henry Jackson Society is a diplomacy and national security believe thank based in the United Kingdom.

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