Poland Set to ‘Soon 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 professor 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 present development rates.

The plain assessment weighed that successive government failures in regulation and drawing in financial investment had actually caused 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 two months,’ he composed in The Henry Jackson Society’s newest 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 regards to per capita income by 2030, which the central European nation’s military will soon exceed the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and equipment on the existing trajectory.

‘The problem is that once we are downgraded to a second tier middle power, it’s going to be virtually difficult to return. Nations do not come back from this,’ Dr Ibrahim told MailOnline today.

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

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

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

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

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‘Not only is the U.K. predicted to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, however also a smaller army and one that is unable to sustain release 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 rapid rearmament task.

‘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 problem, of stopping working to invest in our military and basically contracting out security to the United States and NATO,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting tiredness 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 costs and patterns of low productivity are nothing brand-new. But Britain is now likewise ‘failing to adjust’ to the Trump administration’s shock to the rules-based worldwide order, stated 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 ‘protected’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by hurting the last vestiges of its military may and financial power.

The U.K., he said, ‘appears to be making progressively 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 analysis.

Negotiations between the U.K. and Mauritius were started by the Tories in 2022, however a contract was revealed by the Labour federal 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 worrying tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government explains as being by excellent power competitors’.

Calls for the U.K. to supply reparations for its historic role in the slave trade were rekindled 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.

An Opposition 2 primary battle 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 during a press conference 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 danger.

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

He recommended a new security model to ‘improve the U.K.’s strategic dynamism’ based on a rethink of migratory policy and threat evaluation, access to uncommon earth minerals in a market dominated by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and independence by means of financial investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on atomic energy.

‘Without immediate policy changes to reignite development, Britain will end up being a decreased power, reliant on more powerful allies and vulnerable to foreign browbeating,’ the Foreign Policy columnist stated.

‘As global financial competitors magnifies, the U.K. must decide whether to accept a vibrant development program or resign itself to permanent decrease.’

Britain’s dedication to the concept of Net Zero might be laudable, however the pursuit will prevent development and unknown strategic goals, he cautioned.

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

‘We are a nation that has stopped working to buy our economic, in our energy facilities. And we have significant resources at our disposal.’

Nuclear power, consisting of the use of little modular reactors, could be a benefit 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 financing design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour political leaders had actually firmly insisted was key to discovering the money for costly plant-building projects.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development agency, has actually been heralded for its grants for small energy-producing companies at home, business owners have warned a wider culture of ‘risk aversion’ in the U.K. suppresses 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 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 decline.

But the revival of autocracies on the world stage risks further undermining the rules-based international order from which Britain ‘advantages tremendously’ as a globalised economy.

‘The risk to this order … has established partly due to the fact that of the lack of a robust will to safeguard it, owing in part to ponder foreign efforts to overturn the recognition of the true lurking danger they position.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim alerted that this is insufficient. 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 essentially bodies that use up immense quantities of funds and they’ll simply keep growing substantially,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You could double the NHS budget and it will actually not make much of a damage. So all of this will require fundamental reform and will take a great deal of courage from whomever is in power because it will make them unpopular.’

The report lays out recommendations in extreme tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a restored focus on protecting Britain’s function as a leader in high-tech markets, energy security, and international trade.

Vladimir Putin speaks to the guv of Arkhangelsk region Alexander Tsybulsky throughout their meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, March 11, 2025

File image. Britain’s economic stagnation could see it quickly end up being a ‘2nd tier’ partner

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

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

The Centre for Economic Policy Research assessed at the end of in 2015 that Euro area economic performance has been ‘suppressed’ considering that around 2018, illustrating ‘diverse obstacles of energy dependence, making vulnerabilities, and shifting global trade characteristics’.

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

This stays fragile, however, with residents significantly agitated by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of economical accommodation and trapped in low paying seasonal jobs.

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

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