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

Britain is on course to becoming a ‘second tier’ European country like Spain or Italy due to economic decline and a weak armed force that weakens its usefulness to allies, a professional has cautioned.

Research professor 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 misguided policies that might see it lose its standing as a top-tier middle power at existing development rates.

The plain evaluation weighed that successive federal government failures in guideline and drawing in investment had triggered Britain to miss out on the ‘markets of the future’ courted by developed 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 most current 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 regards to per capita earnings by 2030, which the central European nation’s military will quickly go beyond the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and devices on the existing trajectory.

‘The concern is that once we are downgraded to a second tier middle power, it’s going to be almost impossible to get back. Nations don’t come back 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 have the ability to make the hard choices right now.’

People pass boarded up shops 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 to Archer crews from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery throughout a live fire range on Rovajärvi Training Area, throughout Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

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

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

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‘Not just is the U.K. predicted to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, but also a smaller army and one that is not able to sustain deployment at scale.’

This is of specific concern at a time of increased geopolitical stress, with Britain pegged to be among 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 huge oversight on the part of subsequent governments, not just Starmer’s problem, of failing to purchase our military and essentially outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting tiredness of providing 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 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 shock to the rules-based global 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 organizations as soon as ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by damaging the last vestiges of its military might and economic power.

The U.K., he stated, ‘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, 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 alerted at the time that ‘the move demonstrates worrying tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government refers to as being characterised by excellent power competition’.

Calls for the U.K. to offer reparations for its historic role in the servant trade were rekindled also in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer said ahead of a conference of Commonwealth nations that reparations would not be on the agenda.

A Challenger 2 primary fight tank of the British forces during 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 against its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of threat.

‘We understand soldiers and missiles however stop working to fully develop of the risk that having no option to China’s supply chains may have on our ability to react to military aggression.’

He recommended a new security design to ‘boost the U.K.’s tactical 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 by means of financial investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on atomic energy.

‘Without instant policy modifications to reignite growth, Britain will end up being a lessened power, reliant on more powerful allies and vulnerable to foreign browbeating,’ the Diplomacy writer said.

‘As global economic competitors heightens, the U.K. needs to decide whether to accept a bold growth agenda or resign itself to irreparable decline.’

Britain’s dedication to the idea of Net Zero might be laudable, but the pursuit will prevent growth and unknown strategic objectives, he alerted.

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

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

Nuclear power, including the use of small modular reactors, could be a boon for the British economy and .

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

Britain did introduce a brand-new financing model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour political leaders had actually insisted was essential to finding the cash for expensive plant-building projects.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development company, has actually been heralded for its grants for little energy-producing companies at home, business owners have actually warned a wider culture of ‘threat hostility’ in the U.K. stifles 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 picture of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has regularly failed to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian hazard’, permitting the trend of handled decline.

But the renewal of autocracies on the world phase dangers further undermining the rules-based worldwide order from which Britain ‘advantages enormously’ as a globalised economy.

‘The threat to this order … has established partially due to the fact that of the lack of a robust will to safeguard it, owing in part to ponder foreign efforts to subvert the acknowledgment of the real lurking threat they position.’

The Trump administration’s cautioning to NATO allies in Europe that they will have 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 inadequate. He prompted a top-down reform of ‘basically our whole 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 enormous amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing significantly,’ he told MailOnline.

‘You could double the NHS budget and it will truly not make much of a dent. So all of this will need fundamental reform and will take a great deal of courage from whomever is in power since it will make them out of favor.’

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

Vladimir Putin consults with 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 soon end up being 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 pay for its own defence has cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s alarming circumstance after decades of sluggish development and minimized costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research evaluated at the end of last year that Euro area economic efficiency has actually been ‘controlled’ considering that around 2018, highlighting ‘complex obstacles of energy dependence, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and moving worldwide trade dynamics’.

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

This remains vulnerable, however, with homeowners significantly upset by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of inexpensive lodging and trapped in low paying seasonal jobs.

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

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