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

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

Research professor Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning brand-new report that the U.K. has 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 current growth rates.

The stark evaluation weighed that succeeding government failures in regulation and drawing in financial investment had triggered Britain to miss out on 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 newest report, Strategic Prosperity: The Case for Economic Growth as a National Security Priority.

The report evaluates that Britain is now on track to fall behind Poland in terms of per capita income by 2030, which the main European country’s armed force will quickly surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and equipment on the current trajectory.

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

‘This is going to be sped up decrease unless we nip this in the bud and have bold leaders who are able to make the challenging choices today.’

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 speak with Archer teams from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery during a live fire variety 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, but cautioned much deeper, systemic problems threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a globally influential power.

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

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

This is of specific concern at a time of increased geopolitical stress, with Britain pegged to be among the leading forces in Europe’s rapid 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 a massive oversight on the part of subsequent governments, not simply Starmer’s problem, of failing to buy our military and essentially contracting out security to the United States and NATO,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting tiredness of supplying the security umbrella to Europe, Europe now needs 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 costs and patterns of low performance are nothing brand-new. But Britain is now likewise ‘stopping working to adjust’ to the Trump administration’s shock to the rules-based international order, stated Dr Ibrahim.

The former consultant to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review noted in the report that in spite of the ‘weakening’ of the organizations when ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by harming the last vestiges of its might and financial power.

The U.K., he stated, ‘seems 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 in between the U.K. and Mauritius were begun by the Tories in 2022, but an agreement 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 demonstrates stressing strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government refers to as being characterised by excellent power competition’.

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

A Challenger 2 primary fight tank of the British forces throughout the NATO’s Spring Storm workout 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 examined that the U.K. seems to be acting against its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of risk.

‘We understand soldiers and rockets however stop working to totally conceive of the danger that having no alternative to China’s supply chains might have on our ability to react to military aggression.’

He suggested a brand-new security model to ‘enhance the U.K.’s tactical dynamism’ based upon 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 independence via financial investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on nuclear energy.

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

‘As global financial competition magnifies, the U.K. needs to decide whether to accept a bold development agenda or resign itself to irreparable decline.’

Britain’s dedication to the concept of Net Zero might be laudable, however the pursuit will hinder growth and unknown tactical goals, he warned.

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

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

Nuclear power, including making use of small modular reactors, might be an advantage for the British economy and energy self-reliance.

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

Britain did introduce a new funding design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour politicians had firmly insisted was essential to finding the cash for pricey plant-building jobs.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development firm, has actually been heralded for its grants for small energy-producing business in the house, business owners have alerted a broader culture of ‘danger aversion’ in the U.K. suppresses 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 danger’, permitting the trend of handled decline.

But the revival of autocracies on the world phase dangers further weakening the rules-based worldwide order from which Britain ‘benefits enormously’ as a globalised economy.

‘The hazard to this order … has established partially since of the absence of a robust will to safeguard it, owing in part to deliberate foreign efforts to subvert the recognition of the true hiding danger they posture.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim cautioned 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 use up tremendous amounts 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 dent. So all of this will require fundamental reform and will take a great deal of courage from whomever is in power since it will make them undesirable.’

The report describes recommendations in radical tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a renewed concentrate on securing Britain’s function as a leader in modern industries, energy security, and international trade.

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

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

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

Britain is not alone in falling behind. The Trump administration’s persistence that Europe pay for its own defence has cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s alarming scenario after years of sluggish growth and reduced costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research assessed at the end of last year that Euro location financial performance has been ‘subdued’ given that around 2018, highlighting ‘diverse obstacles of energy dependency, producing vulnerabilities, and moving international trade dynamics’.

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

This remains delicate, however, with residents significantly agitated by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of cost effective lodging and trapped in low paying seasonal jobs.

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

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