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

Britain is on course to becoming a ‘2nd tier’ European nation like Spain or Italy due to economic decline and a weak armed force that weakens its usefulness to allies, an expert has cautioned.

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 misdirected policies that might see it lose its standing as a top-tier middle power at present development rates.

The plain assessment weighed that succeeding government failures in regulation and attracting financial investment had actually triggered Britain to miss out on out on the ‘industries of the future’ courted by established economies.

‘Britain no longer has the industrial base to logistically sustain a war with a like Russia for more than two months,’ he wrote in The Henry Jackson Society’s most current 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 central European nation’s military will soon surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and devices on the present trajectory.

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

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

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

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

Staff Sergeant Rai uses a radio to speak with Archer teams from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery throughout a live fire range on Rovajärvi Training Area, throughout 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 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 alerted.

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

This is of specific concern at a time of heightened geopolitical stress, with Britain pegged to be amongst the leading forces in Europe’s quick rearmament task.

‘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 a massive oversight on the part of subsequent governments, not just Starmer’s problem, 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 offering the security umbrella to Europe, Europe now has to base on its own and the U.K. would have remained 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 absolutely nothing brand-new. But Britain is now also ‘stopping working to change’ to the Trump administration’s shock to the rules-based worldwide order, stated 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 as soon as ‘protected’ by the U.S., Britain is reacting by damaging the last vestiges of its military might and economic power.

The U.K., he said, ‘seems to be making progressively expensive gestures’ like the ₤ 9bn 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 scrutiny.

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 warned at the time that ‘the relocation shows worrying strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government refers to as being characterised by fantastic power competitors’.

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

An Opposition 2 primary 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 throughout an interview in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

Dr Ibhramin examined that the U.K. appears to be acting versus its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of danger.

‘We understand soldiers and missiles however stop working to totally develop of the threat that having no alternative to China’s supply chains might have on our capability to react to military aggressiveness.’

He suggested a brand-new security model to ‘improve the U.K.’s tactical dynamism’ based on a rethink of migratory policy and danger evaluation, access to unusual earth minerals in a market controlled by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and self-reliance through investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on nuclear energy.

‘Without immediate policy changes to reignite development, Britain will become a lessened power, reliant on stronger allies and vulnerable to foreign browbeating,’ the Foreign Policy writer stated.

‘As international financial competitors magnifies, the U.K. must decide whether to welcome a vibrant growth agenda or resign itself to permanent decrease.’

Britain’s dedication to the idea of Net Zero might be admirable, however the pursuit will hinder growth and obscure tactical objectives, he cautioned.

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

‘We are a country that has actually failed to invest in our economic, in our energy infrastructure. And we have significant resources at our disposal.’

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

‘But we have actually failed to commercialise them and clearly that’s going to take a considerable quantity of time.’

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

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation firm, has actually been heralded for its grants for little energy-producing companies in your home, business owners have warned a broader culture of ‘threat aversion’ in the U.K. stifles 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 consistently stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian hazard’, enabling the pattern of handled decline.

But the revival of autocracies on the world phase threats further weakening the rules-based international order from which Britain ‘advantages tremendously’ as a globalised economy.

‘The threat to this order … has actually developed partly since of the lack of a robust will to safeguard it, owing in part to ponder foreign efforts to overturn the recognition of the true prowling hazard they present.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is not enough. He advised a top-down reform of ‘essentially our entire 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 enormous amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing significantly,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You could double the NHS budget plan and it will really not make much of a damage. So all of this will need essential reform and will take a great deal of guts from whomever is in power because it will make them undesirable.’

The report lays out suggestions in extreme tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a renewed concentrate on protecting Britain’s role as a leader in high-tech industries, energy security, and global trade.

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

File image. Britain’s economic stagnation could see it soon end up being a ‘second tier’ partner

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

Britain is not alone in falling behind. The Trump administration’s persistence that Europe spend for its own defence has cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire circumstance after years of slow development and decreased spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research assessed at the end of in 2015 that Euro area financial performance has actually been ‘subdued’ because around 2018, showing ‘complex obstacles of energy dependence, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and shifting global trade dynamics’.

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

This stays delicate, nevertheless, with citizens increasingly upset by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of inexpensive accommodation and trapped in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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