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

Britain is on course to becoming a ‘2nd tier’ European nation like Spain or Italy due to financial decline and a weak military that undermines its usefulness to allies, a specialist has actually alerted.

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

The plain assessment weighed that successive federal government failures in policy and bring 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 like Russia for more than two months,’ he composed in The Henry Jackson Society’s most current 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 terms of per capita income by 2030, which the central European country’s military will soon surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and equipment on the current trajectory.

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

‘This is going to be sped up decline unless we nip this in the bud and have bold leaders who have the ability to make the tough decisions 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 utilizes a radio to talk to Archer teams from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery throughout a live fire variety on Rovajärvi Training Area, throughout Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim welcomed the government’s choice to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, but alerted much deeper, systemic issues threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a globally influential power.

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

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

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

‘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 massive oversight on the part of subsequent federal governments, not simply Starmer’s problem, of failing to buy 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 has to stand 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 productivity are absolutely nothing new. But Britain is now likewise ‘stopping working to adjust’ 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 organizations when ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by harming the last vestiges of its military may and economic power.

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

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. federal government refers to as being characterised by fantastic power competitors’.

Calls for the U.K. to supply reparations for its historical role in the slave trade were revived likewise in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer said ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the agenda.

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

‘We understand soldiers and missiles however fail to completely conceive of the risk that having no option to China’s supply chains might have on our capability to react to military aggression.’

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

‘Without immediate policy modifications to reignite development, Britain will end up being a reduced power, reliant on more powerful allies and susceptible to foreign browbeating,’ the Foreign Policy writer said.

‘As worldwide financial competitors intensifies, the U.K. must choose whether to welcome a bold growth agenda or resign itself to irreparable decrease.’

Britain’s dedication to the concept of Net Zero might be laudable, but the pursuit will hinder growth and unknown strategic objectives, he alerted.

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

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

Nuclear power, including the use of little modular reactors, could be a boon for the British economy and energy self-reliance.

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

Britain did introduce a brand-new financing design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour political leaders had insisted was crucial to finding the cash for costly plant-building jobs.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation agency, has actually been declared for its grants for small energy-producing companies at home, entrepreneurs have actually cautioned a broader culture of ‘danger hostility’ in the U.K. stifles investment.

In 2022, earnings for the poorest 14 million individuals 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 hazard’, permitting the pattern of handled decrease.

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

‘The risk to this order … has established partially since of the lack of a robust will to protect it, owing in part to deliberate foreign efforts to overturn the recognition of the true prowling risk they position.’

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

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

‘Reforming the well-being state, reforming the NHS, reforming pensions – these are basically bodies that take up tremendous amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing considerably,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You might double the NHS budget 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 nerve from whomever is in power due to the fact that it will make them unpopular.’

The report describes suggestions in extreme tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a restored focus on protecting Britain’s role as a leader in high-tech markets, energy security, and global trade.

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

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

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

Britain is not alone in falling behind. The Trump administration’s insistence that Europe pay for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s alarming situation after decades of sluggish development and reduced spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research evaluated at the end of last year that Euro location financial performance has been ‘subdued’ since around 2018, illustrating ‘diverse challenges of energy dependence, producing vulnerabilities, and moving international trade characteristics’.

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

This remains fragile, however, with homeowners increasingly upset by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of affordable accommodation and trapped in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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