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

Britain is on course to ending up being a ‘2nd tier’ European nation like Spain or Italy due to financial decrease and a weak armed force that weakens its usefulness to allies, an expert has warned.

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

The stark assessment weighed that succeeding government failures in regulation and bring in financial investment had actually 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 wrote in The Henry Jackson Society’s newest 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 income by 2030, which the main European country’s armed force will soon exceed the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and equipment on the existing trajectory.

‘The issue is that when we are reduced to a second tier middle power, it’s going to be almost impossible to get back. Nations do not come back from this,’ Dr Ibrahim informed MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be accelerated decrease unless we nip this in the bud and have vibrant leaders who are able to make the difficult decisions today.’

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 federal government’s choice to increase defence costs 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 a globally prominent power.

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

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‘Not only is the U.K. anticipated to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, but likewise a smaller army and one that is unable to sustain implementation 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 job.

‘There are 230 brigades in Ukraine right now, Russian and Ukrainian. Not a single European nation to install 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 basically contracting out 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 has 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 costs and patterns of low performance are nothing new. But Britain is now likewise ‘stopping working to change’ to the Trump administration’s shock to the rules-based international order, said Dr Ibrahim.

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

The U.K., he stated, ‘appears 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 scrutiny.

Negotiations between the U.K. and Mauritius were begun by the Tories in 2022, however an agreement was announced by the Labour federal government last October.

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

Calls for the U.K. to offer reparations for its historical function in the servant trade were revived likewise in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a conference of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the agenda.

A Challenger 2 main fight tank of the British forces 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 during an interview in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

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

‘We understand soldiers and missiles but stop working to totally develop of the risk that having no alternative to China’s supply chains might have on our ability to react to military hostility.’

He suggested a new security model to ‘boost the U.K.’s tactical dynamism’ based on a rethink of migratory policy and danger assessment, access to rare 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 atomic energy.

‘Without instant policy changes to reignite development, Britain will end up being a decreased power, reliant on more powerful allies and vulnerable to foreign browbeating,’ the Diplomacy columnist said.

‘As international financial competition intensifies, the U.K. needs to choose whether to embrace a vibrant development program or resign itself to irreversible decrease.’

Britain’s commitment to the idea of Net Zero may be admirable, however the pursuit will inhibit growth and obscure tactical objectives, he cautioned.

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

‘We are a nation that has failed to buy our economic, in our energy infrastructure. And we have substantial resources at our .’

Nuclear power, including using small modular reactors, could be an advantage for the British economy and energy self-reliance.

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

Britain did introduce a new funding model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour politicians had actually firmly insisted was key to finding the cash for expensive plant-building projects.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development agency, has been heralded for its grants for small energy-producing companies in the house, entrepreneurs have actually alerted a larger culture of ‘danger hostility’ in the U.K. stifles 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 photo of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has actually regularly stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian hazard’, allowing the trend of managed decrease.

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

‘The risk to this order … has developed partially since of the absence of a robust will to protect it, owing in part to ponder foreign efforts to overturn the acknowledgment of the true hiding danger they posture.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim alerted that this is not enough. 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 enormous amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing substantially,’ he told MailOnline.

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

The report outlines recommendations in radical tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a renewed concentrate on protecting Britain’s function as a leader in high-tech markets, energy security, and international trade.

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

File image. Britain’s economic stagnation might see it quickly become a ‘second tier’ partner

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

Britain is not alone in falling behind. The Trump administration’s persistence that Europe spend for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire circumstance after years of sluggish growth and minimized spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of in 2015 that Euro area economic efficiency has actually been ‘subdued’ since around 2018, showing ‘multifaceted obstacles of energy dependency, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and moving worldwide trade characteristics’.

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

This stays vulnerable, nevertheless, with homeowners progressively upset by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of inexpensive lodging and caught in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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