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 military that undermines its usefulness to allies, a professional has actually cautioned.

Research professor 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 growth rates.

The stark assessment weighed that successive government failures in policy and drawing in financial investment had actually triggered Britain to lose out on the ‘industries of the future’ courted by developed economies.

‘Britain no longer has the industrial 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 evaluates that Britain is now on track to fall behind Poland in regards to per capita income by 2030, which the main European country’s military will quickly exceed the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and devices on the current trajectory.

‘The problem is that when we are devalued to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be almost difficult to get back. Nations don’t 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 bold leaders who are able to make the hard decisions right now.’

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 talk to 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 choice to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, however cautioned much deeper, systemic issues threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a globally prominent power.

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

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

This is of particular concern at a time of heightened geopolitical tension, 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 country to mount a single heavy armoured brigade.’

‘This is a huge oversight on the part of subsequent governments, not simply Starmer’s problem, of failing to invest in our military and out security to the United States and NATO,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting tiredness 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 in fact 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 also ‘stopping working to change’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based worldwide order, stated Dr Ibrahim.

The previous advisor 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 responding by hurting the last vestiges of its military might and financial power.

The U.K., he stated, ‘appears to be making progressively expensive 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 actually been the source of much examination.

Negotiations between the U.K. and Mauritius were started by the Tories in 2022, however a contract 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 stressing strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government describes as being characterised by fantastic power competitors’.

Require the U.K. to provide reparations for its historical function in the slave trade were revived likewise in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer said ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the program.

An Opposition 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 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 conceive of the danger that having no alternative to China’s supply chains may have on our ability to respond to military aggressiveness.’

He recommended a brand-new security model to ‘boost the U.K.’s tactical dynamism’ based on a rethink of migratory policy and hazard assessment, access to unusual earth minerals in a market controlled by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and self-reliance by means of financial investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on atomic energy.

‘Without instant policy changes to reignite development, Britain will end up being a diminished power, reliant on more powerful allies and susceptible to foreign browbeating,’ the Diplomacy writer stated.

‘As global economic competitors intensifies, the U.K. needs to choose whether to embrace a vibrant development agenda or resign itself to irreversible decrease.’

Britain’s commitment to the concept of Net Zero might be laudable, however the pursuit will prevent growth and odd strategic goals, he cautioned.

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

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

Nuclear power, including using little modular reactors, might be an advantage for the British economy and energy self-reliance.

‘But we have actually stopped working to commercialise them and obviously that’s going to take a substantial quantity of time.’

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

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development agency, has actually been heralded for its grants for small energy-producing companies in your home, business owners have actually warned a larger culture of ‘threat hostility’ in the U.K. stifles financial 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 regularly failed to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian risk’, permitting the pattern of handled decrease.

But the revival of autocracies on the world phase threats even more undermining the rules-based global order from which Britain ‘benefits enormously’ as a globalised economy.

‘The danger to this order … has established partly because of the lack of a robust will to safeguard it, owing in part to deliberate foreign efforts to subvert the acknowledgment of the real prowling hazard they position.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is insufficient. He prompted a top-down reform of ‘basically 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 use up tremendous quantities of funds and they’ll simply keep growing considerably,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You might double the NHS spending plan and it will really not make much of a dent. So all of this will require essential reform and will take a great deal of nerve from whomever is in power due to the fact that it will make them unpopular.’

The report lays out recommendations in extreme tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a renewed focus on securing Britain’s function as a leader in modern markets, energy security, and worldwide trade.

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

File image. Britain’s financial stagnation could see it quickly become a ‘2nd tier’ partner

Boarded-up shops 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 spend for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire situation after decades of sluggish development and decreased costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research assessed at the end of in 2015 that Euro location financial efficiency has been ‘subdued’ because around 2018, illustrating ‘diverse obstacles of energy dependency, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and moving worldwide trade characteristics’.

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

This remains fragile, however, with homeowners progressively agitated by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of budget-friendly accommodation and trapped in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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