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

Britain is on course to becoming a ‘2nd tier’ European country like Spain or Italy due to and a weak military that weakens its effectiveness to allies, an expert has warned.

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

The stark assessment weighed that successive government failures in policy and drawing in financial investment had caused Britain to lose out on the ‘industries of the future’ courted by established economies.

‘Britain no longer has the industrial 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 most current report, Strategic Prosperity: The Case for Economic Growth as a National Security Priority.

The report assesses that Britain is now on track to fall behind Poland in regards to per capita earnings by 2030, which the central European nation’s military will soon surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and devices on the existing trajectory.

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

‘This is going to be sped up decrease unless we nip this in the bud and have vibrant leaders who have the ability to make the challenging choices 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 uses a radio to speak to Archer crews from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery throughout a live fire range on Rovajärvi Training Area, during Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim welcomed the federal government’s decision to increase defence costs to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, but cautioned much deeper, systemic problems threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a globally prominent power.

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

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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 army and one that is not able to sustain implementation at scale.’

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

‘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 governments, not simply Starmer’s problem, of failing to invest in our military and essentially outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,’ he told MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting fatigue of offering 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 actually lead European defence. But none of the European countries are.’

Slowed defence spending and patterns of low efficiency are nothing new. But Britain is now likewise ‘stopping working to change’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based worldwide order, stated 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 responding by hurting the last vestiges of its military may and financial power.

The U.K., he said, ‘appears to be making significantly costly 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 examination.

Negotiations in 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 cautioned at the time that ‘the move demonstrates worrying tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government explains as being characterised by fantastic power competitors’.

Calls for the U.K. to offer reparations for its historical role in the servant 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 agenda.

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

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

‘We comprehend soldiers and rockets however fail to fully conceive of the risk that having no option to China’s supply chains may have on our capability to react to military aggressiveness.’

He recommended a new security design to ‘enhance the U.K.’s strategic dynamism’ based upon a rethink of migratory policy and threat assessment, access to rare earth minerals in a market dominated by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and independence through financial investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on atomic energy.

‘Without immediate policy modifications to reignite development, Britain will end up being a decreased power, reliant on more powerful allies and vulnerable to foreign coercion,’ the Diplomacy writer stated.

‘As international financial competition heightens, the U.K. must decide whether to accept a bold development program or resign itself to irreversible decline.’

Britain’s commitment to the concept of Net Zero might be laudable, however the pursuit will inhibit growth and odd strategic goals, he cautioned.

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

‘We are a nation that has failed to invest in our financial, in our energy infrastructure. And we have considerable resources at our disposal.’

Nuclear power, including using little modular reactors, could be an advantage for the British economy and energy independence.

‘But we have actually failed to commercialise them and clearly that’s going to take a significant quantity of time.’

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

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development agency, has actually been declared for its grants for small energy-producing business at home, entrepreneurs have cautioned a wider culture of ‘threat hostility’ in the U.K. suppresses financial investment.

In 2022, incomes for the poorest 14 million individuals 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 consistently failed to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian hazard’, permitting the pattern of managed decrease.

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

‘The danger to this order … has developed partially 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 acknowledgment of the true hiding danger they position.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim alerted that this is not enough. He prompted 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 tremendous quantities of funds and they’ll just keep growing substantially,’ he told MailOnline.

‘You could double the NHS budget and it will truly not make much of a dent. So all of this will need fundamental reform and will take a great deal of nerve from whomever is in power because it will make them undesirable.’

The report details recommendations in extreme tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a renewed focus on securing Britain’s function as a leader in modern industries, energy security, and worldwide trade.

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

File picture. Britain’s economic stagnation might see it quickly become a ‘2nd 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 back. The Trump administration’s persistence that Europe spend for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s alarming scenario after decades of slow development and reduced spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research assessed at the end of last year that Euro location financial efficiency has actually been ‘subdued’ since around 2018, highlighting ‘complex difficulties of energy reliance, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and shifting global trade dynamics’.

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

This remains fragile, however, with homeowners significantly upset by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of affordable 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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