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 economic decrease and a weak military that undermines its usefulness to allies, a professional has cautioned.

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

The stark evaluation weighed that succeeding federal government failures in regulation and drawing in investment had triggered Britain to miss out on out on the ‘markets 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 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 behind Poland in terms of per capita income by 2030, which the main European nation’s armed force will quickly surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and equipment on the present trajectory.

‘The concern is that once we are downgraded to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be virtually impossible to get back. 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 vibrant leaders who have the ability to make the hard decisions today.’

People pass boarded up shops 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 with Archer teams from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery during a live fire variety on Rovajärvi Training Area, throughout Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

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

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

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‘Not only is the U.K. forecasted to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, but also a smaller sized army and one that is not able to sustain implementation at scale.’

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

‘There are 230 brigades in Ukraine right now, Russian and Ukrainian. Not a single European country to install a single heavy armoured brigade.’

‘This is a huge oversight on the part of subsequent federal governments, not simply Starmer’s issue, of failing to purchase our military and basically contracting out 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 stand on its own and the U.K. would have been in a premium position to actually lead European defence. But none of the European nations are.’

Slowed defence spending and patterns of low productivity are nothing brand-new. But Britain is now likewise ‘stopping working to change’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based global 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 institutions as soon as ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is reacting by hurting the last vestiges of its military may and financial power.

The U.K., he said, ‘seems to be making progressively pricey 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 begun by the Tories in 2022, however a contract was announced by the Labour federal government last October.

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

Require the U.K. to provide reparations for its historic role in the slave trade were revived likewise in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a conference of Commonwealth nations that reparations would not be on the agenda.

A Challenger 2 primary 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 throughout an interview in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

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

‘We understand soldiers and rockets however fail to totally develop of the threat that having no alternative to China’s supply chains might have on our capability to react to military hostility.’

He suggested a brand-new security model to ‘boost the U.K.’s strategic dynamism’ based on a rethink of migratory policy and risk assessment, access to unusual earth minerals in a market controlled by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and self-reliance by means of investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on nuclear energy.

‘Without instant policy changes to reignite growth, Britain will become a diminished power, reliant on more powerful allies and susceptible to foreign coercion,’ the Diplomacy writer said.

‘As global financial competitors heightens, the U.K. should decide whether to welcome a bold development agenda or resign itself to irreparable decrease.’

Britain’s dedication to the concept of Net Zero may be laudable, but the pursuit will hinder development and odd tactical objectives, he alerted.

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

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

Nuclear power, consisting of using small modular reactors, might be a boon for the British economy and energy independence.

‘But we have actually stopped working to commercialise them and undoubtedly that’s going to take a considerable amount of time.’

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

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation agency, has been heralded for its grants for little energy-producing companies in the house, business owners have alerted a wider culture of ‘danger hostility’ in the U.K. suppresses 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 actually consistently stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian hazard’, enabling the trend of managed decline.

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

‘The risk to this order … has actually developed partially since of the absence of a robust will to protect it, owing in part to ponder foreign attempts to subvert the acknowledgment of the true lurking risk they present.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is insufficient. He prompted a top-down reform of ‘basically our entire state’ to bring the ossified state back to life and sustain it.

‘Reforming the well-being state, reforming the NHS, reforming pensions – these are essentially bodies that take up enormous quantities of funds and they’ll just keep growing considerably,’ he told MailOnline.

‘You could double the NHS spending plan and it will truly not make much of a dent. So all of this will need basic reform and will take a great deal of courage from whomever is in power due to the fact that it will make them undesirable.’

The report describes recommendations in radical tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a renewed concentrate on protecting Britain’s role as a leader in state-of-the-art markets, energy security, and worldwide trade.

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

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

Boarded-up shops 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 cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire situation after decades of slow development and decreased spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research assessed at the end of last year that Euro area financial efficiency has actually been ‘suppressed’ since around 2018, highlighting ‘diverse difficulties of energy dependence, making vulnerabilities, and moving global trade characteristics’.

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

This stays delicate, nevertheless, with homeowners significantly agitated by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of budget friendly lodging and trapped 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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