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

Britain is on course to becoming a ‘second tier’ European nation like Spain or Italy due to economic decrease and a weak military that weakens its effectiveness to allies, an expert has actually alerted.

Research professor Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning new report that the U.K. has actually 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 existing growth rates.

The stark assessment weighed that successive government failures in regulation and attracting financial investment had caused Britain to miss out on the ‘markets 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 two months,’ he wrote in The Henry Jackson Society’s latest 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 regards to per capita earnings by 2030, and that the main European nation’s military will quickly surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and devices on the existing trajectory.

‘The problem is that when we are downgraded to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be practically impossible to return. Nations don’t return from this,’ Dr Ibrahim informed MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be accelerated decrease unless we nip this in the bud and have strong leaders who are able to make the challenging choices right now.’

People pass boarded up stores 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 with Archer teams from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery throughout a live fire variety on Rovajärvi Training Area, during 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 warned much deeper, systemic concerns threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a globally influential power.

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

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‘Not just is the U.K. anticipated to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, however likewise a smaller army and one that is unable to sustain implementation at scale.’

This is of particular concern at a time of heightened geopolitical stress, with Britain pegged to be amongst the leading forces in Europe’s quick rearmament project.

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

‘This is a massive oversight on the part of subsequent governments, not just Starmer’s problem, of failing to buy our military and essentially outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,’ he informed 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 really lead European defence. But none of the European nations are.’

Slowed defence costs and patterns of low performance are absolutely nothing brand-new. But Britain is now also ‘failing to adjust’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based worldwide order, said Dr Ibrahim.

The former advisor to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review noted in the report that in spite of the ‘weakening’ of the institutions once ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by hurting the last vestiges of its military might and financial power.

The U.K., he said, ‘seems to be making significantly costly gestures’ like the ₤ 9bn handover of the strategic 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 in between the U.K. and Mauritius were started by the Tories in 2022, however an arrangement was announced by the Labour government last October.

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

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

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 assessed that the U.K. appears to be acting versus its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of risk.

‘We understand soldiers and missiles however fail to totally develop of the danger that having no alternative to China’s supply chains may have on our ability to react to military aggressiveness.’

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

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

‘As global financial competition heightens, the U.K. should choose whether to welcome a bold growth program or resign itself to irreparable decrease.’

Britain’s commitment to the idea of Net Zero might be admirable, but the pursuit will inhibit development and unknown strategic objectives, he alerted.

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

‘We are a country that has actually stopped working to buy our financial, in our energy infrastructure. And we have significant resources at our disposal.’

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

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

Britain did introduce a brand-new financing model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour political leaders had insisted was essential to discovering the money for costly plant-building projects.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation agency, has been heralded for its grants for small energy-producing companies in the house, entrepreneurs have warned a wider culture of ‘risk hostility’ in the U.K. suppresses 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 picture of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has actually consistently failed to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian threat’, enabling the trend of managed decrease.

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

‘The threat to this order … has developed partially because of the lack of a robust will to defend it, owing in part to ponder foreign efforts to overturn the acknowledgment of the true prowling threat they posture.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is insufficient. He prompted a top-down reform of ‘basically 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 essentially bodies that take up tremendous amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing significantly,’ he told MailOnline.

‘You might double the NHS spending plan and it will actually not make much of a damage. So all of this will need fundamental reform and will take a lot of courage from whomever is in power due to the fact that it will make them out of favor.’

The report details recommendations in radical tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a renewed concentrate on protecting Britain’s function as a leader in modern markets, energy security, and global trade.

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

File photo. Britain’s economic stagnancy could see it quickly become a ‘second tier’ partner

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

Britain is not alone in falling behind. The Trump administration’s persistence that Europe pay for its own defence has cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s alarming circumstance after years of slow development and lowered spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research assessed at the end of in 2015 that Euro location economic performance has been ‘controlled’ since around 2018, showing ‘complex obstacles of energy dependence, producing vulnerabilities, and shifting international trade dynamics’.

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

This stays delicate, however, with homeowners significantly agitated by the to foreign visitors as they are priced out of cost effective accommodation and trapped in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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