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 undermines its effectiveness to allies, a professional has actually alerted.

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 misguided policies that could see it lose its standing as a top-tier middle power at present growth rates.

The stark assessment weighed that succeeding federal government failures in policy and attracting financial investment had actually triggered Britain to lose out on the ‘markets of the future’ courted by developed 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 latest 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 central European country’s armed force will soon exceed the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and devices on the current trajectory.

‘The concern is that when we are reduced to a second tier middle power, it’s going to be practically difficult to return. Nations do not return from this,’ Dr Ibrahim informed MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be sped up decline unless we nip this in the bud and have vibrant leaders who are able to make the difficult choices today.’

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 uses a radio to speak with Archer crews from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery during a live fire range on Rovajärvi Training Area, throughout Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim welcomed the federal government’s choice to increase defence spending 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 an internationally influential power.

With a weakening commercial base, Britain’s effectiveness 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, but likewise 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 stress, with Britain pegged to be among the leading forces in Europe’s rapid rearmament job.

‘There are 230 brigades in Ukraine today, 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 governments, not simply Starmer’s issue, of stopping working to purchase our military and basically contracting out security to the United States and NATO,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting tiredness of providing the security umbrella to Europe, Europe now needs to base on its own and the U.K. would have been in a premium position to in fact lead European defence. But none of the European nations are.’

Slowed defence spending and patterns of low performance are absolutely nothing brand-new. But Britain is now also ‘stopping working to adjust’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based international order, stated 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 as soon as ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by damaging the last vestiges of its military may and economic power.

The U.K., he said, ‘seems to be making 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 been the source of much analysis.

Negotiations in between the U.K. and Mauritius were started by the Tories in 2022, however a contract was revealed 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 relocation demonstrates fretting strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government refers to as being characterised by terrific power competition’.

Calls for the U.K. to provide reparations for its historical function in the slave trade were rekindled likewise in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer said ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth nations that reparations would not be on the agenda.

A Challenger 2 main fight tank of the British forces during 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. appears to be acting against its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of danger.

‘We comprehend soldiers and missiles however fail to completely conceive of the danger that having no option to China’s supply chains may have on our ability to respond to military aggression.’

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

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

‘As international financial competitors heightens, the U.K. must choose whether to embrace a bold development agenda or resign itself to permanent decrease.’

Britain’s dedication to the concept of Net Zero may be admirable, but the pursuit will hinder growth and unknown tactical goals, he alerted.

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

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

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

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

Britain did introduce a new funding model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour politicians had insisted was crucial to discovering the cash for expensive plant-building tasks.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation agency, has been declared for its grants for little energy-producing business in your home, entrepreneurs have actually cautioned a wider culture of ‘danger hostility’ in the U.K. stifles financial 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 image of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has regularly failed to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian risk’, allowing the pattern of handled decrease.

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

‘The hazard to this order … has actually developed partly since of the lack of a robust will to defend it, owing in part to ponder foreign efforts to overturn the acknowledgment of the real lurking risk they posture.’

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 approximately the seriousness of investing in defence.

But Dr Ibrahim cautioned that this is inadequate. He prompted 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 take up immense amounts of funds and they’ll just keep growing considerably,’ he told MailOnline.

‘You could double the NHS budget plan and it will actually 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 due to the fact that it will make them out of favor.’

The report describes recommendations in radical tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a renewed focus on securing Britain’s role as a leader in modern markets, energy security, and international trade.

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

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

Boarded-up stores in Blackpool as more than 13,000 stores closed their doors for great 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 dire circumstance after decades of slow growth and minimized costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research assessed at the end of last year that Euro location economic efficiency has actually been ‘controlled’ given that around 2018, highlighting ‘diverse difficulties of energy dependency, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and moving worldwide trade characteristics’.

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

This remains vulnerable, nevertheless, with homeowners significantly agitated 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 foreign policy and national security think thank based in the United Kingdom.

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