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 undermines its usefulness to allies, an expert has cautioned.

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

The plain assessment weighed that succeeding government failures in policy and drawing in investment had actually caused Britain to miss 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 wrote in The Henry Jackson Society’s newest report, Strategic Prosperity: The Case for Economic Growth as a National Security Priority.

The report examines that Britain is now on track to fall back Poland in terms of per capita income by 2030, which the central European country’s armed force will quickly go beyond the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and devices on the present trajectory.

‘The concern is that once we are reduced to a second tier middle power, it’s going to be virtually difficult to return. Nations don’t come back from this,’ Dr Ibrahim informed MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be sped up decline unless we nip this in the bud and have bold leaders who have the ability to make the tough choices right now.’

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 utilizes a radio to speak with Archer teams from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery during a live fire range on Rovajärvi Training Area, throughout Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim welcomed the federal government’s decision to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, but cautioned much deeper, systemic issues threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a worldwide influential power.

With a weakening commercial base, Britain’s usefulness 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, however likewise a smaller army and one that is unable to sustain release at scale.’

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

‘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 huge oversight on the part of subsequent federal governments, not simply Starmer’s problem, of failing to buy our military and essentially contracting out 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 has 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 nations are.’

Slowed defence costs and patterns of low productivity are nothing brand-new. But Britain is now also ‘stopping working to change’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based global order, said Dr Ibrahim.

The former 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, ‘seems to be making increasingly 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 begun by the Tories in 2022, but an agreement was revealed by the Labour government last October.

Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security believe thank cautioned at the time that ‘the relocation shows fretting strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government refers to as being characterised by excellent power competition’.

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

A Challenger 2 main fight 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 evaluated that the U.K. appears to be acting versus its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of threat.

‘We understand soldiers and rockets but fail to totally envisage the risk that having no option to China’s supply chains may have on our ability to react to military aggressiveness.’

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

‘Without immediate policy changes to reignite development, Britain will become a lessened power, reliant on more powerful allies and vulnerable to foreign browbeating,’ the Diplomacy columnist stated.

‘As worldwide financial competition magnifies, the U.K. should choose whether to accept a strong development agenda or resign itself to irreparable decline.’

Britain’s dedication to the concept of Net Zero might be laudable, however the pursuit will prevent development and unknown tactical goals, he alerted.

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

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

Nuclear power, consisting of the usage of small modular reactors, could be an advantage for the British economy and energy independence.

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

Britain did introduce a new financing model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour politicians had actually firmly insisted was essential to finding the cash for costly plant-building jobs.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation company, has been declared for its grants for little energy-producing business at home, entrepreneurs have actually cautioned a broader culture of ‘risk hostility’ in the U.K. stifles investment.

In 2022, earnings 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 actually consistently stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian threat’, enabling the trend of handled decline.

But the revival of autocracies on the world stage risks further weakening the rules-based global order from which Britain ‘benefits tremendously’ as a economy.

‘The threat to this order … has actually established partially because of the absence of a robust will to protect it, owing in part to deliberate foreign attempts to subvert the acknowledgment of the true prowling threat they present.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim alerted that this is not enough. He urged a top-down reform of ‘basically our entire 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 tremendous quantities of funds and they’ll just keep growing considerably,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You might double the NHS spending plan and it will actually not make much of a dent. So all of this will need basic reform and will take a lot of courage from whomever is in power since it will make them unpopular.’

The report describes recommendations in radical tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a restored focus on protecting Britain’s function as a leader in high-tech industries, energy security, and international trade.

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

File photo. Britain’s economic stagnation might see it quickly become a ‘2nd tier’ partner

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

Britain is not alone in falling back. The Trump administration’s insistence that Europe spend for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire situation after decades of slow growth and lowered spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research assessed at the end of last year that Euro location economic efficiency has actually been ‘controlled’ given that around 2018, showing ‘multifaceted difficulties of energy dependency, producing vulnerabilities, and moving worldwide trade dynamics’.

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

This remains vulnerable, nevertheless, with citizens progressively agitated by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of budget-friendly lodging and trapped in low paying seasonal jobs.

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

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