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 weakens its effectiveness to allies, a professional has actually alerted.

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

The plain evaluation weighed that succeeding federal government failures in regulation and attracting investment had actually caused 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 2 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 behind Poland in terms of per capita earnings by 2030, and that the main European country’s military will quickly surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and equipment on the current trajectory.

‘The concern is that as soon as we are reduced to a second tier middle power, it’s going to be virtually difficult to get back. Nations do not come back from this,’ Dr Ibrahim told MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be accelerated decline unless we nip this in the bud and have vibrant leaders who have the ability to make the hard choices today.’

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

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

Staff Sergeant Rai uses a radio to talk to Archer crews from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery during a live fire variety on Rovajärvi Training Area, throughout Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

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

With a weakening commercial base, Britain’s effectiveness to its allies is now ‘falling behind 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 unable to sustain implementation at scale.’

This is of particular issue at a time of heightened geopolitical stress, with Britain pegged to be among the leading forces in Europe’s fast rearmament job.

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

‘This is an enormous oversight on the part of subsequent federal governments, not simply Starmer’s problem, of stopping working to invest in our military and essentially contracting out 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 been in a premium position to really lead European defence. But none of the European countries are.’

Slowed defence costs and patterns of low performance are absolutely nothing new. But Britain is now likewise ‘failing to adjust’ to the Trump administration’s shock to the rules-based international order, said Dr Ibrahim.

The previous consultant to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review noted in the report that in spite of the ‘weakening’ of the institutions once ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by harming the last vestiges of its military may and economic power.

The U.K., he stated, ‘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, but 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 demonstrates worrying tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government describes as being characterised by excellent power competitors’.

Calls for the U.K. to offer reparations for its historical role in the slave trade were revived likewise in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the agenda.

An Opposition 2 main 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 during a press conference 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 understand soldiers and missiles but fail to totally develop of the risk that having no alternative to China’s supply chains may have on our ability to react to military hostility.’

He recommended a new security design to ‘boost the U.K.’s strategic dynamism’ based upon a rethink of migratory policy and threat assessment, access to uncommon earth minerals in a market dominated by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and independence via investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on atomic energy.

‘Without instant policy modifications to reignite growth, Britain will become a decreased power, reliant on stronger allies and vulnerable to foreign browbeating,’ the Diplomacy columnist said.

‘As global financial competitors heightens, the U.K. needs to choose whether to embrace a strong growth agenda or resign itself to permanent decrease.’

Britain’s dedication to the idea of Net Zero might be admirable, however the pursuit will inhibit growth and unknown strategic goals, he cautioned.

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

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

Nuclear power, including making use of small modular reactors, could 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 substantial quantity of time.’

Britain did introduce a new financing design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour politicians had actually insisted was crucial to finding the cash for costly plant-building jobs.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development company, has been declared for its grants for little energy-producing business in your home, entrepreneurs have actually cautioned a broader 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 picture of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has regularly stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian hazard’, enabling the pattern of handled decrease.

But the renewal of autocracies on the world stage dangers further weakening the rules-based international order from which Britain ‘benefits immensely’ as a globalised economy.

‘The danger to this order … has actually established partly since of the absence of a robust will to protect it, owing in part to deliberate foreign attempts to overturn the recognition of the real lurking risk they pose.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim alerted that this is insufficient. He advised 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 basically bodies that take up enormous amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing considerably,’ he told MailOnline.

‘You could double the NHS budget and it will really not make much of a damage. So all of this will require basic reform and will take a great deal of guts from whomever is in power since it will make them unpopular.’

The report details recommendations in radical tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a restored focus on protecting Britain’s role as a leader in modern industries, energy security, and worldwide trade.

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

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

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

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

The Centre for Economic Policy Research evaluated at the end of last year that Euro area financial performance has been ‘controlled’ given that around 2018, highlighting ‘diverse challenges of energy dependence, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and moving global trade dynamics’.

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

This stays vulnerable, nevertheless, with homeowners increasingly agitated by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of budget friendly lodging and caught in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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