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

Britain is on course to ending up being a ‘2nd tier’ European country like Spain or Italy due to financial decline and a weak armed force that undermines its effectiveness to allies, an expert has actually alerted.

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

The plain evaluation weighed that succeeding federal 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 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 examines that Britain is now on track to fall back Poland in regards to per capita earnings by 2030, and that the main European nation’s military will soon surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and devices on the current trajectory.

‘The problem is that when we are reduced to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be practically difficult to return. Nations do not return from this,’ Dr Ibrahim informed MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be accelerated decrease unless we nip this in the bud and have strong leaders who have the ability to make the tough 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 government’s decision to increase defence costs to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, but cautioned much deeper, systemic concerns threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as an internationally prominent power.

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

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

This is of particular concern at a time of heightened geopolitical stress, with Britain pegged to be among the leading forces in Europe’s quick 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 huge oversight on the part of subsequent governments, not simply Starmer’s issue, of stopping working to purchase our military and essentially outsourcing to the United States and NATO,’ he told MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting tiredness of providing the security umbrella to Europe, Europe now needs 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 nations are.’

Slowed defence costs 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, stated Dr Ibrahim.

The previous 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 reacting by harming the last vestiges of its military might and financial power.

The U.K., he stated, ‘appears to be making increasingly costly gestures’ like the ₤ ۹bn handover of the strategic 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 government last October.

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

Calls for the U.K. to offer reparations for its historical function in the servant trade were revived also in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the agenda.

An Opposition 2 primary fight tank of the British forces throughout 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 evaluated that the U.K. seems to be acting versus its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of danger.

‘We comprehend soldiers and rockets however fail to fully conceive of the danger that having no option to China’s supply chains may have on our capability to respond to military aggressiveness.’

He suggested a brand-new security model to ‘improve the U.K.’s strategic dynamism’ based on a rethink of migratory policy and risk evaluation, access to uncommon earth minerals in a market controlled by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and self-reliance by means of 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 vulnerable to foreign coercion,’ the Foreign Policy columnist said.

‘As worldwide financial competition intensifies, the U.K. needs to decide whether to welcome a bold development agenda or resign itself to irreversible decrease.’

Britain’s dedication to the idea of Net Zero may be laudable, but the pursuit will hinder growth and unknown strategic objectives, he cautioned.

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

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

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

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

Britain did introduce a new financing model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour politicians had actually firmly insisted was essential to discovering the cash for expensive plant-building projects.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation agency, has been heralded for its grants for little energy-producing companies at home, business owners have actually cautioned a larger culture of ‘threat 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 consistently stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian danger’, allowing the trend of managed decline.

But the revival of autocracies on the world stage dangers even more weakening the rules-based international order from which Britain ‘advantages tremendously’ as a globalised economy.

‘The hazard to this order … has actually established partially because of the absence of a robust will to defend it, owing in part to deliberate foreign attempts to subvert the acknowledgment of the real lurking hazard they present.’

The Trump administration’s alerting to NATO allies in Europe that they will need to do their own bidding has gone some method towards waking Britain as much as the seriousness of investing in defence.

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is not enough. He prompted a top-down reform of ‘basically our whole 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 take up tremendous quantities of funds and they’ll just keep growing considerably,’ he told MailOnline.

‘You might double the NHS spending plan and it will really not make much of a dent. So all of this will need essential reform and will take a lot of courage from whomever is in power since it will make them out of favor.’

The report describes suggestions in radical tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a restored concentrate on protecting Britain’s function as a leader in state-of-the-art industries, energy security, and international trade.

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

File photo. Britain’s economic stagnancy might see it soon become a ‘second 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 back. The Trump administration’s insistence that Europe spend for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s alarming situation after years of slow growth and minimized spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research evaluated at the end of last year that Euro location economic performance has actually been ‘subdued’ given that around 2018, illustrating ‘multifaceted challenges of energy dependence, making vulnerabilities, and moving worldwide trade dynamics’.

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

This remains delicate, nevertheless, with residents increasingly agitated by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of economical accommodation and trapped in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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