Poland Set to ‘Soon 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 decline and a weak armed force that undermines its effectiveness to allies, a professional has cautioned.

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

The stark assessment weighed that succeeding government failures in regulation and drawing in financial investment had triggered Britain to miss out on out on the ‘markets of the future’ courted by developed economies.

‘Britain no longer has the commercial 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 assesses that Britain is now on track to fall back Poland in terms of per capita income by 2030, and that the main European country’s military will soon go beyond the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and equipment on the current trajectory.

‘The concern is that when we are reduced to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be virtually difficult to get back. Nations don’t 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 vibrant leaders who have the ability to make the tough decisions right now.’

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 with Archer crews from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery during 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, however alerted much deeper, systemic issues threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a worldwide influential power.

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

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

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

‘There are 230 brigades in Ukraine right now, 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 just Starmer’s issue, of failing to invest in our military and essentially contracting out security to the United States and NATO,’ he told MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting tiredness of supplying 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 really lead European defence. But none of the European countries are.’

Slowed defence costs and patterns of low productivity are absolutely nothing new. But Britain is now likewise ‘failing to change’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based international order, stated Dr Ibrahim.

The former advisor 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 might and financial power.

The U.K., he stated, ‘seems to be making significantly pricey 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 examination.

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 think thank cautioned at the time that ‘the relocation shows stressing strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government explains as being characterised by excellent power competition’.

Calls for the U.K. to provide reparations for its historical function in the slave trade were rekindled likewise in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer said ahead of a conference of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the program.

A Challenger 2 primary 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 evaluated 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 but fail to completely envisage the risk that having no option to China’s supply chains may have on our ability to respond to military aggressiveness.’

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

‘Without instant policy modifications to reignite growth, Britain will become a decreased power, reliant on more powerful allies and vulnerable to foreign browbeating,’ the Diplomacy writer said.

‘As global financial competitors heightens, the U.K. needs to decide whether to embrace a bold development program or resign itself to irreparable decrease.’

Britain’s dedication to the concept of Net Zero may be admirable, however the pursuit will inhibit growth and odd strategic objectives, he alerted.

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

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

Nuclear power, consisting of the use of small 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 significant quantity of time.’

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

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation agency, has been heralded for its grants for little energy-producing business in the house, entrepreneurs have actually warned a wider culture of ‘threat aversion’ in the U.K. stifles 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 image of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has actually consistently stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian threat’, allowing the pattern of handled decrease.

But the renewal of autocracies on the world stage threats even more weakening the rules-based worldwide order from which Britain ‘advantages tremendously’ as a .

‘The danger to this order … has established partly since of the absence of a robust will to defend it, owing in part to deliberate foreign efforts to overturn the recognition of the true hiding danger they posture.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim cautioned that this is not enough. He advised 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 basically bodies that use up tremendous quantities of funds and they’ll just keep growing substantially,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You could double the NHS spending plan and it will really not make much of a damage. So all of this will require basic reform and will take a lot of guts from whomever is in power since it will make them undesirable.’

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

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

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

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

Britain is not alone in falling back. The Trump administration’s insistence that Europe pay for its own defence has cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire situation after years of slow growth and lowered costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research assessed at the end of in 2015 that Euro area economic performance has been ‘suppressed’ given that around 2018, illustrating ‘complex challenges of energy dependency, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and shifting worldwide trade characteristics’.

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

This stays fragile, nevertheless, with residents significantly upset by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of cost effective accommodation and caught in low paying seasonal jobs.

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

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