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

Britain is on course to ending up being a ‘second tier’ European country like Spain or Italy due to financial decrease and a weak military that undermines its usefulness to allies, a specialist has alerted.

Research teacher Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning brand-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 assessment weighed that succeeding federal government failures in guideline and drawing in financial investment had actually caused Britain to miss out on the ‘markets 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 regards to per capita earnings by 2030, which the central European country’s military will soon go beyond the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and equipment on the current trajectory.

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

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

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 teams from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery throughout a live fire range on Rovajärvi Training Area, throughout Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim welcomed the government’s decision to increase defence costs to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, however alerted much deeper, systemic issues threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as an internationally influential power.

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

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‘Not just is the U.K. anticipated to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, but also a smaller sized army and one that is unable 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 fast rearmament project.

‘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 failing to invest in our military and essentially outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,’ he told MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting fatigue of offering the security umbrella to Europe, Europe now has to stand on its own and the U.K. would have been in a premium position to really lead European defence. But none of the European nations are.’

Slowed defence spending and patterns of low productivity are nothing new. But Britain is now likewise ‘failing to change’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based worldwide order, stated 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 institutions as soon as ‘protected’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by damaging the last vestiges of its military might and economic power.

The U.K., he stated, ‘appears to be making progressively pricey 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, but a contract 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 move shows worrying tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government refers to as being characterised by terrific power competition’.

Calls for the U.K. to provide reparations for its historic function in the slave trade were rekindled also in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer said ahead of a conference of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the agenda.

A Challenger 2 main battle 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 during an interview 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 risk.

‘We comprehend soldiers and rockets but stop working to totally conceive of the danger that having no option to China’s supply chains may have on our capability to react to military hostility.’

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

‘Without immediate policy changes to reignite development, Britain will become a diminished power, reliant on more powerful allies and susceptible to foreign coercion,’ the Foreign Policy writer said.

‘As worldwide financial competition heightens, the U.K. needs to choose whether to embrace a vibrant development program or resign itself to permanent decline.’

Britain’s commitment to the concept of Net Zero might be laudable, however the pursuit will inhibit growth and unknown strategic goals, he warned.

‘I am not saying that the environment is not crucial. But we simply can not pay for to do this.

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

Nuclear power, consisting of using small modular reactors, might be a boon for the British economy and energy self-reliance.

‘But we have actually stopped working to commercialise them and undoubtedly that’s going to take a considerable amount 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 crucial to finding the cash for expensive plant-building jobs.

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

In 2022, incomes for the poorest 14 million people 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 actually regularly stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian risk’, enabling the pattern of handled decrease.

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

‘The risk to this order … has established partly because of the absence of a robust will to safeguard it, owing in part to deliberate foreign attempts to overturn the recognition 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 gone some way towards waking Britain approximately the seriousness of buying defence.

But Dr Ibrahim alerted that this is insufficient. He prompted a top-down reform of ‘basically 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 basically bodies that take up immense quantities of funds and they’ll just keep growing considerably,’ he told MailOnline.

‘You could double the NHS spending plan and it will truly not make much of a dent. So all of this will need fundamental reform and will take a lot of nerve from whomever is in power because it will make them undesirable.’

The report details suggestions in radical tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a renewed focus on protecting Britain’s role as a leader in markets, 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 image. Britain’s economic stagnancy might see it soon end up being 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 behind. The Trump administration’s persistence that Europe pay for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s alarming scenario after decades of sluggish development and reduced spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of last year that Euro area economic performance has actually been ‘subdued’ considering that around 2018, illustrating ‘diverse difficulties of energy reliance, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and moving global trade dynamics’.

There stay extensive discrepancies in between European economies; German deindustrialisation has struck organizations tough and forced redundancies, while Spain has actually grown in line with its tourism-focused economy.

This stays delicate, however, with citizens progressively upset by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of inexpensive accommodation and trapped in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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