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

Britain is on course to ending up being a ‘second tier’ European country like Spain or Italy due to economic decrease and a weak armed force that weakens its effectiveness to allies, an expert has actually alerted.

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

The stark evaluation weighed that successive government failures in guideline and bring in investment had actually triggered Britain to lose 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 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 behind Poland in terms of per capita income by 2030, which the main European country’s armed force will quickly surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and equipment on the present trajectory.

‘The problem is that when we are devalued to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be practically difficult to get back. Nations don’t come back from this,’ Dr Ibrahim told MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be accelerated decline unless we nip this in the bud and have vibrant leaders who have the ability to make the tough decisions 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 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 government’s decision to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, however alerted much deeper, systemic issues threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as an internationally prominent power.

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

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

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

‘There are 230 brigades in Ukraine today, 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 federal governments, not just Starmer’s issue, of stopping working to buy our military and essentially contracting out security to the United States and NATO,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting tiredness of supplying 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 really lead European defence. But none of the European nations are.’

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

The previous advisor to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review kept in mind in the report that in spite of the ‘weakening’ of the organizations as soon as ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is reacting by harming the last vestiges of its military might and economic power.

The U.K., he said, ‘seems to be making progressively pricey 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 scrutiny.

Negotiations in between the U.K. and Mauritius were started by the Tories in 2022, however an arrangement 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 demonstrates worrying tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government explains as being characterised by terrific power competitors’.

Require the U.K. to supply reparations for its historic function in the servant trade were revived likewise in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer said ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the agenda.

An Opposition 2 main fight tank of the 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 throughout a press conference in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

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

‘We understand soldiers and missiles but fail to fully envisage the risk that having no option to China’s supply chains might have on our capability to react to military hostility.’

He recommended a brand-new security model to ‘improve the U.K.’s tactical dynamism’ based on a rethink of migratory policy and danger evaluation, access to unusual 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 changes to reignite growth, Britain will become a reduced power, reliant on stronger allies and vulnerable to foreign coercion,’ the Diplomacy columnist stated.

‘As global economic competition intensifies, the U.K. needs to choose whether to welcome a strong growth program or resign itself to irreversible decrease.’

Britain’s dedication to the concept of Net Zero may be admirable, however the pursuit will inhibit growth and unknown tactical goals, he warned.

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

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

Nuclear power, consisting of the usage of little modular reactors, could be a boon for the British economy and energy independence.

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

Britain did present a new funding model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour political leaders had insisted was crucial to discovering the cash for expensive plant-building projects.

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

Britain has actually regularly stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian risk’, permitting the trend of managed decline.

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

‘The risk to this order … has developed partly due to the fact that of the absence of a robust will to safeguard 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 up to the seriousness of purchasing defence.

But Dr Ibrahim alerted that this is not enough. He advised a top-down reform of ‘essentially 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 use up immense amounts of funds and they’ll just keep growing considerably,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You might double the NHS budget plan and it will really not make much of a damage. So all of this will require essential reform and will take a lot of guts from whomever is in power because it will make them unpopular.’

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

Vladimir Putin talks to the governor of Arkhangelsk region Alexander Tsybulsky during their meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, March 11, 2025

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

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

Britain is not alone in falling behind. The Trump administration’s insistence that Europe pay for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s alarming scenario after years of slow development and lowered costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research evaluated at the end of in 2015 that Euro area economic performance has actually been ‘subdued’ given that around 2018, illustrating ‘multifaceted obstacles of energy dependency, making vulnerabilities, and shifting international trade dynamics’.

There stay profound discrepancies in between European economies; German deindustrialisation has struck companies hard and forced redundancies, while Spain has actually grown in line with its tourism-focused economy.

This remains fragile, nevertheless, with residents significantly agitated by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of budget-friendly accommodation and trapped in low paying seasonal jobs.

The Henry Jackson Society is a diplomacy and nationwide security think thank based in the UK.

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