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 armed force that undermines its effectiveness to allies, an expert has alerted.

Research teacher Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning brand-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 current development rates.

The stark evaluation weighed that successive government failures in policy and attracting investment had triggered Britain to miss out on the ‘markets 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 assesses that Britain is now on track to fall behind Poland in regards to per capita income by 2030, and that the central European country’s armed force will quickly go beyond the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and equipment on the current trajectory.

‘The concern is that when we are devalued to a second tier middle power, it’s going to be virtually difficult to return. do not return from this,’ Dr Ibrahim told MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be sped up decline unless we nip this in the bud and have strong leaders who are able to make the difficult 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 crews from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery throughout a live fire variety on Rovajärvi Training Area, during Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim welcomed the federal 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 industrial base, Britain’s usefulness to its allies is now ‘falling back even second-tier European powers’, he warned.

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

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

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

‘This is a massive oversight on the part of subsequent governments, not simply Starmer’s issue, of failing to invest in our military and basically outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,’ he told MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting fatigue of supplying 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 actually lead European defence. But none of the European nations are.’

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

The previous advisor to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review kept in mind in the report that in spite of the ‘weakening’ of the institutions when ‘protected’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by harming the last vestiges of its military may and financial power.

The U.K., he said, ‘appears to be making increasingly costly gestures’ like the ₤ 9bn 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 been the source of much scrutiny.

Negotiations between the U.K. and Mauritius were begun by the Tories in 2022, but an arrangement was announced by the Labour federal government last October.

Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security think thank alerted at the time that ‘the move demonstrates fretting strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government refers to as being characterised by great power competitors’.

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

An Opposition 2 main 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 during an interview in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

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

‘We understand soldiers and rockets but fail to totally conceive of the threat that having no alternative to China’s supply chains might have on our capability to respond to military aggression.’

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

‘Without instant policy changes to reignite growth, Britain will end up being a reduced power, reliant on stronger allies and susceptible to foreign browbeating,’ the Foreign Policy writer said.

‘As global economic competitors magnifies, the U.K. needs to choose whether to embrace a bold growth program or resign itself to permanent decline.’

Britain’s commitment to the idea of Net Zero might be admirable, however the pursuit will inhibit growth and unknown strategic objectives, he warned.

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

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

Nuclear power, including the use of little modular reactors, could be a boon for the British economy and energy self-reliance.

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

Britain did introduce a brand-new funding model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour political leaders had insisted was essential to discovering the money for expensive plant-building projects.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development agency, has been declared for its grants for small energy-producing companies at home, entrepreneurs have cautioned a larger culture of ‘danger aversion’ in the U.K. suppresses 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 hazard’, enabling the trend of handled decrease.

But the renewal of autocracies on the world phase risks even more weakening the rules-based international order from which Britain ‘advantages immensely’ as a globalised economy.

‘The threat to this order … has actually developed partly because of the absence of a robust will to protect it, owing in part to deliberate foreign attempts to subvert the recognition of the true prowling risk they position.’

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 up to the urgency of purchasing defence.

But Dr Ibrahim cautioned that this is inadequate. He prompted a top-down reform of ‘essentially 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 informed MailOnline.

‘You might double the NHS budget and it will truly not make much of a damage. So all of this will require essential reform and will take a great deal of courage from whomever is in power due to the fact that it will make them undesirable.’

The report details suggestions in radical tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a renewed focus on protecting Britain’s role as a leader in high-tech markets, energy security, and international trade.

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

File picture. Britain’s economic stagnation might see it soon become a ‘2nd 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 persistence 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 costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research evaluated at the end of last year that Euro location financial performance has been ‘subdued’ considering that around 2018, highlighting ‘complex difficulties of energy dependency, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and moving worldwide trade dynamics’.

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

This remains delicate, however, with locals significantly agitated by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of budget-friendly lodging and caught in low paying seasonal jobs.

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

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