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

Britain is on course to ending up being a ‘2nd tier’ European country like Spain or Italy due to financial decrease and a weak armed force that weakens its effectiveness to allies, a specialist has warned.

Research professor Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning new report that the U.K. has been paralysed by low financial investment, high tax and misguided policies that might see it lose its standing as a top-tier middle power at present development rates.

The stark assessment weighed that successive government failures in regulation and bring in financial investment had triggered Britain to lose 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 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 income by 2030, and that the main European nation’s armed force will quickly go beyond the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and equipment on the current trajectory.

‘The problem is that as soon as we are downgraded to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be almost difficult to get back. Nations do not return from this,’ Dr Ibrahim informed MailOnline today.

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

Dr Ibrahim welcomed the federal government’s choice 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 a worldwide 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. predicted to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, but likewise a smaller army and one that is not able to sustain release at scale.’

This is of particular concern at a time of heightened geopolitical stress, with Britain pegged to be among the leading forces in Europe’s rapid 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 issue, of stopping working to buy our military and basically outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,’ he informed MailOnline.

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

Slowed defence costs and patterns of low efficiency are nothing brand-new. But Britain is now likewise ‘stopping working to change’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based global order, said 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 ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by harming 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 actually been the source of much analysis.

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

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

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

A 2 main battle tank of the British forces throughout 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 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 risk.

‘We understand soldiers and rockets but stop working to completely envisage the threat that having no alternative to China’s supply chains might have on our capability to react to military hostility.’

He suggested a brand-new security model to ‘enhance the U.K.’s strategic dynamism’ based upon a rethink of migratory policy and danger assessment, access to uncommon earth minerals in a market controlled by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and self-reliance via financial investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on atomic energy.

‘Without immediate policy modifications to reignite growth, Britain will end up being a decreased power, reliant on more powerful allies and vulnerable to foreign coercion,’ the Diplomacy columnist said.

‘As global economic competition heightens, the U.K. must decide whether to welcome a bold growth program or resign itself to irreparable decrease.’

Britain’s dedication to the concept of Net Zero may be admirable, however the pursuit will inhibit development and unknown strategic goals, he alerted.

‘I am not stating that the environment is trivial. But we merely can not pay for to do this.

‘We are a country that has actually stopped working to purchase our economic, in our energy infrastructure. And we have substantial resources at our disposal.’

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

‘But we’ve stopped working to commercialise them and clearly that’s going to take a significant amount of time.’

Britain did introduce a new funding design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour politicians had actually insisted was crucial to finding the cash for expensive plant-building tasks.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation company, has actually been heralded for its grants for little energy-producing business in the house, entrepreneurs have actually alerted a larger culture of ‘threat hostility’ in the U.K. suppresses financial investment.

In 2022, earnings 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 consistently stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian danger’, permitting the trend of handled decrease.

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

‘The hazard to this order … has actually developed partially due to the fact that of the lack of a robust will to defend it, owing in part to ponder foreign efforts to subvert the recognition of the true hiding threat 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 investing in defence.

But Dr Ibrahim alerted that this is inadequate. He advised 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 take up tremendous amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing substantially,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You could double the NHS spending plan and it will truly not make much of a damage. So all of this will require basic reform and will take a great deal of courage from whomever is in power since it will make them undesirable.’

The report details recommendations in radical tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a restored concentrate on protecting Britain’s role as a leader in state-of-the-art industries, energy security, and global trade.

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

File image. Britain’s financial stagnancy could see it soon become a ‘second tier’ partner

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

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

The Centre for Economic Policy Research evaluated at the end of last year that Euro area financial efficiency has actually been ‘suppressed’ considering that around 2018, showing ‘diverse challenges of energy reliance, making vulnerabilities, and shifting worldwide trade characteristics’.

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

This stays fragile, nevertheless, with locals increasingly agitated by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of budget friendly accommodation and caught in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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