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 military that weakens its effectiveness to allies, a professional has actually cautioned.

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

The plain evaluation weighed that succeeding federal government failures in guideline and attracting investment had caused 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 2 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 terms of per capita earnings by 2030, and that the central European nation’s armed force will soon exceed the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and devices on the current trajectory.

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

‘This is going to be sped up decrease unless we nip this in the bud and have strong leaders who are able to make the difficult decisions 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 to Archer teams from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery during a live fire range on Rovajärvi Training Area, throughout Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim invited the federal government’s decision 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 prominent power.

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

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‘Not only is the U.K. predicted to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, however also a smaller army and one that is not able 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 job.

‘There are 230 brigades in Ukraine today, Russian and Ukrainian. Not a single European nation to mount a single heavy armoured brigade.’

‘This is a massive oversight on the part of subsequent federal governments, not just Starmer’s issue, of stopping working to purchase our military and basically outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,’ he told MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting fatigue of supplying 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 efficiency are absolutely nothing brand-new. But Britain is now likewise ‘failing to adjust’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based worldwide order, said Dr Ibrahim.

The former consultant 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 stated, ‘seems to be making significantly 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 between the U.K. and Mauritius were started by the Tories in 2022, but an agreement was announced by the Labour government last October.

Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security believe thank warned at the time that ‘the relocation shows fretting strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government explains as being characterised by great power competitors’.

Require the U.K. to provide reparations for its historical function in the servant trade were revived likewise in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a conference of Commonwealth nations that reparations would not be on the program.

A Challenger 2 primary 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. appears to be acting versus its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of threat.

‘We comprehend soldiers and missiles but fail to fully envisage the risk that having no option to China’s supply chains may have on our ability to respond to military hostility.’

He suggested a brand-new security design to ‘improve the U.K.’s strategic dynamism’ based upon a rethink of migratory policy and hazard evaluation, access to rare earth minerals in a market controlled by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and independence by means of financial investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on nuclear energy.

‘Without immediate policy changes to reignite development, Britain will end up being a decreased power, reliant on stronger allies and susceptible to foreign coercion,’ the Foreign Policy writer stated.

‘As worldwide financial competitors intensifies, the U.K. should decide whether to accept a bold development agenda or resign itself to irreparable decline.’

Britain’s commitment to the concept of Net Zero might be laudable, however the pursuit will hinder growth and unknown strategic goals, he alerted.

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

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

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

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

Britain did present a new financing design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour politicians had insisted was crucial to discovering the money for costly plant-building jobs.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development agency, has actually been declared for its grants for little energy-producing business in your home, entrepreneurs have alerted a larger culture of ‘threat aversion’ 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 photo of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has regularly stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian danger’, allowing the trend of handled decline.

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

‘The hazard to this order … has established partly due to the fact that of the absence of a robust will to protect it, owing in part to deliberate foreign efforts to overturn the recognition of the real prowling hazard they posture.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is insufficient. He urged a top-down reform of ‘essentially our whole 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 enormous amounts of funds and they’ll just keep growing considerably,’ he told MailOnline.

‘You might double the NHS budget and it will really not make much of a damage. So all of this will require basic reform and will take a great deal of nerve from whomever is in power since it will make them unpopular.’

The report outlines recommendations in radical tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a restored focus on securing Britain’s role as a leader in high-tech industries, energy security, and worldwide trade.

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

File image. Britain’s financial stagnancy could see it quickly end up being a ‘second 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 behind. The Trump administration’s insistence that Europe pay for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s alarming circumstance after years of slow growth and minimized spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research evaluated at the end of last year that Euro area financial efficiency has actually been ‘controlled’ because around 2018, showing ‘complex challenges of energy reliance, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and moving international trade characteristics’.

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

This remains vulnerable, nevertheless, with citizens increasingly agitated by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of cost effective accommodation and trapped in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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