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

Britain is on course to ending up being a ‘second tier’ European nation like Spain or Italy due to financial decline and a weak armed force that weakens its effectiveness to allies, a professional has warned.

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

The plain assessment weighed that succeeding government failures in guideline and drawing in investment had caused Britain to miss out on out on the ‘industries of the future’ courted by established 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 evaluates that Britain is now on track to fall back Poland in terms of per capita earnings by 2030, which the central European country’s armed force will quickly exceed the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and devices on the current trajectory.

‘The concern is that as soon as we are devalued to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be practically impossible 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 are able 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 speak to Archer teams from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery throughout a live fire variety on Rovajärvi Training Area, throughout Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim invited the government’s decision to increase defence costs to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, however warned much deeper, systemic problems threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a worldwide prominent power.

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

Why WW3 is currently here … and how the UK will require to lead in America’s absence

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

This is of specific issue at a time of heightened geopolitical tension, with Britain pegged to be amongst the leading forces in Europe’s quick 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 an enormous oversight on the part of subsequent governments, not just Starmer’s problem, of stopping working to purchase our military and essentially outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting fatigue of providing the security umbrella to Europe, Europe now needs to base 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 spending and patterns of low productivity are nothing new. But Britain is now likewise ‘stopping working to adjust’ to the Trump administration’s shock to the rules-based international order, stated 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 organizations once ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is reacting by hurting the last vestiges of its military might 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 been the source of much scrutiny.

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 alerted at the time that ‘the move demonstrates stressing tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government explains as being characterised by excellent power competitors’.

Calls for the U.K. to supply reparations for its historic role in the slave trade were rekindled 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 primary battle tank of the British forces throughout 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 an interview 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 comprehend soldiers and rockets but stop working to totally envisage the danger that having no option to China’s supply chains may have on our ability to respond to military aggression.’

He recommended a brand-new security model to ‘boost the U.K.’s tactical 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 self-reliance via investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on nuclear energy.

‘Without instant policy changes to reignite growth, Britain will end up being a reduced power, reliant on more powerful allies and vulnerable to foreign coercion,’ the Foreign Policy writer said.

‘As international financial competitors magnifies, the U.K. should decide whether to accept a vibrant growth program or resign itself to irreparable decrease.’

Britain’s dedication to the concept of Net Zero might be laudable, but the pursuit will prevent growth and odd tactical objectives, he alerted.

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

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

Nuclear power, consisting of making use of small modular reactors, could be a benefit for the British economy and energy independence.

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

Britain did present a brand-new financing design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour political leaders had insisted was essential to discovering the money for costly plant-building tasks.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation company, has been heralded for its grants for small energy-producing companies in your home, business owners have warned a broader culture of ‘danger hostility’ in the U.K. stifles financial 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 to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian danger’, enabling the trend of managed decline.

But the resurgence of autocracies on the world stage risks even more undermining the rules-based international order from which Britain ‘benefits tremendously’ as a globalised economy.

‘The threat to this order … has actually established partly due to the fact that of the lack of a robust will to defend it, owing in part to ponder foreign efforts to overturn the recognition of the true lurking hazard they posture.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim alerted that this is inadequate. He urged a top-down reform of ‘basically 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 essentially bodies that take up enormous amounts of funds and they’ll just keep growing considerably,’ he told MailOnline.

‘You could double the NHS spending plan and it will really not make much of a damage. So all of this will require fundamental reform and will take a lot of courage from whomever is in power because it will make them out of favor.’

The report details suggestions in extreme tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a restored concentrate on securing Britain’s function as a leader in high-tech markets, energy security, and worldwide trade.

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

File image. Britain’s economic stagnation could see it soon end up being a ‘second tier’ partner

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

Britain is not alone in falling back. The Trump administration’s persistence that Europe pay for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s alarming situation after decades of slow development and reduced costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of last year that Euro location economic performance has been ‘controlled’ considering that around 2018, showing ‘multifaceted obstacles of energy dependence, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and moving international trade dynamics’.

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

This remains fragile, however, with residents progressively agitated by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of affordable lodging and trapped in low paying seasonal jobs.

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

SpainPoland