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

Britain is on course to becoming a ‘2nd tier’ European country like Spain or Italy due to financial decrease and a weak military that undermines its effectiveness to allies, a specialist has actually warned.

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

The stark assessment weighed that successive federal government failures in regulation and attracting financial investment had actually caused Britain to miss out on out on the ‘industries 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 composed in The Henry Jackson Society’s latest report, Strategic Prosperity: The Case for Economic Growth as a National Security Priority.

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

‘The issue is that once we are downgraded to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be practically difficult to return. 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 have the ability to make the difficult 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 talk to Archer crews 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 choice to increase defence costs 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 back even second-tier European powers’, he cautioned.

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‘Not only is the U.K. forecasted to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, however also a smaller sized army and one that is not able to sustain release at scale.’

This is of specific concern at a time of heightened geopolitical stress, 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 install a single heavy armoured brigade.’

‘This is an enormous oversight on the part of subsequent federal governments, not just Starmer’s problem, of stopping working to buy our military and essentially outsourcing 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 needs to base on its own and the U.K. would have been in a premium position to actually lead European defence. But none of the European nations are.’

Slowed defence spending and patterns of low productivity are absolutely nothing new. But Britain is now likewise ‘failing to adjust’ to the Trump administration’s shock to the rules-based global order, said 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 when ‘protected’ by the U.S., Britain is reacting by damaging the last vestiges of its military may 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 analysis.

Negotiations between the U.K. and Mauritius were started by the Tories in 2022, however a contract was announced by the Labour government last October.

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

Require the U.K. to offer reparations for its historical role in the slave trade were revived also in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a conference of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the program.

A Challenger 2 main battle 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 during a press conference in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

Dr Ibhramin evaluated that the U.K. seems to be acting versus its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of risk.

‘We comprehend soldiers and rockets but stop working to completely conceive 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 model to ‘enhance the U.K.’s tactical dynamism’ based upon a rethink of migratory policy and hazard evaluation, access to rare earth minerals in a market dominated by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and self-reliance through financial investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on atomic energy.

‘Without instant policy modifications to reignite development, Britain will become a reduced power, reliant on more powerful allies and susceptible to foreign browbeating,’ the Diplomacy writer stated.

‘As worldwide economic competitors heightens, the U.K. must decide whether to welcome a vibrant development program or resign itself to irreparable decrease.’

Britain’s commitment to the concept of Net Zero may be laudable, however the pursuit will inhibit growth and unknown tactical objectives, he warned.

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

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

Nuclear power, including the use of small modular reactors, might be an advantage for the British economy and energy independence.

‘But we’ve failed to commercialise them and certainly that’s going to take a substantial quantity of time.’

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

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

Britain has consistently failed to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian threat’, enabling the trend of managed decrease.

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

‘The threat to this order … has actually developed partially because of the absence of a robust will to safeguard it, owing in part to deliberate foreign attempts to overturn the acknowledgment of the real hiding threat they position.’

The Trump administration’s alerting to NATO allies in Europe that they will need to do their own bidding has gone some way towards waking Britain as much as the seriousness of buying defence.

But Dr Ibrahim alerted that this is insufficient. He prompted 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 basically bodies that use up immense amounts of funds and they’ll just keep growing significantly,’ he informed MailOnline.

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

The report describes suggestions in radical tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a renewed focus on protecting Britain’s role as a leader in modern markets, energy security, and international trade.

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

File image. Britain’s economic stagnancy might see it quickly end up being a ‘2nd 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 back. 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 slow growth and lowered costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research evaluated at the end of in 2015 that Euro area financial efficiency has been ‘subdued’ since around 2018, showing ‘complex challenges of energy reliance, producing vulnerabilities, and shifting worldwide trade dynamics’.

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

This stays fragile, nevertheless, with locals significantly agitated by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of budget-friendly lodging and trapped in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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