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

Britain is on course to ending up being a ‘2nd tier’ European nation like Spain or Italy due to financial decline and a weak military that weakens its usefulness to allies, a professional has actually cautioned.

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

The stark evaluation weighed that succeeding federal government failures in regulation and attracting investment had triggered Britain to lose 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 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 examines that Britain is now on track to fall behind Poland in terms of per capita earnings by 2030, which the central European country’s armed force will soon surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and equipment on the existing trajectory.

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

‘This is going to be sped up decrease unless we nip this in the bud and have strong leaders who have the ability to make the hard decisions today.’

People pass boarded up shops on March 20, 2024 in Hastings, England

A British soldier refills his rifle on February 17, 2025 in Smardan, Romania

Staff Sergeant Rai uses a radio to talk to 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 choice to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, however alerted much deeper, systemic concerns threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as an internationally prominent power.

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

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

This is of specific issue at a time of increased geopolitical stress, with Britain pegged to be among the leading forces in Europe’s rapid rearmament task.

‘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 purchase our military and essentially contracting out security to the United States and NATO,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting fatigue of providing 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 productivity are nothing brand-new. But Britain is now also ‘failing to adjust’ to the Trump administration’s shock to the rules-based global 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 organizations once ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by damaging the last vestiges of its military might and economic power.

The U.K., he said, ‘appears to be making progressively expensive 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 actually been the source of much analysis.

Negotiations between the U.K. and Mauritius were started by the Tories in 2022, but an arrangement was announced by the Labour government last October.

Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security believe thank warned at the time that ‘the move demonstrates fretting strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government refers to as being characterised by terrific power competition’.

Require the U.K. to supply reparations for its historical function in the slave trade were revived also in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer stated 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 throughout 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 versus its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of threat.

‘We understand soldiers and missiles however stop working to totally conceive of the threat that having no alternative to China’s supply chains might have on our capability to react to military aggressiveness.’

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

‘Without immediate policy changes to reignite growth, Britain will become a reduced power, reliant on stronger allies and vulnerable to foreign coercion,’ the Diplomacy writer said.

‘As international economic competition heightens, the U.K. must choose whether to embrace a vibrant growth agenda or resign itself to permanent decrease.’

Britain’s dedication to the concept of Net Zero might be laudable, but the pursuit will inhibit growth and odd tactical objectives, he alerted.

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

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

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

‘But we’ve failed to commercialise them and obviously that’s going to take a significant amount of time.’

Britain did present a brand-new funding model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour political leaders had insisted was crucial to finding the money for expensive plant-building jobs.

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

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

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

‘The hazard to this order … has actually developed partly since of the lack of a robust will to safeguard it, owing in part to deliberate foreign efforts to subvert the acknowledgment of the true prowling hazard they posture.’

The Trump administration’s alerting to NATO allies in Europe that they will need to do their own bidding has gone some method towards waking Britain as much as the urgency of purchasing defence.

But Dr Ibrahim alerted that this is not enough. He advised a top-down reform of ‘essentially our entire 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 use up tremendous quantities of funds and they’ll just keep growing considerably,’ he told MailOnline.

‘You might double the NHS spending plan and it will really not make much of a dent. So all of this will require basic reform and will take a great deal of guts from whomever is in power since it will make them unpopular.’

The report describes suggestions in extreme tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a renewed concentrate on protecting Britain’s role as a leader in state-of-the-art markets, energy security, and international trade.

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

File image. Britain’s financial stagnancy could see it soon become a ‘second tier’ partner

Boarded-up stores 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 spend for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire situation after years of slow growth and minimized spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research assessed at the end of last year that Euro area economic performance has actually been ‘controlled’ considering that around 2018, showing ‘complex difficulties of energy reliance, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and moving global trade characteristics’.

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

This stays delicate, however, with residents increasingly agitated by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of inexpensive lodging and trapped in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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