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 economic decrease and a weak military that undermines its usefulness to allies, an expert has actually warned.

Research teacher Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning brand-new report that the U.K. has 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 growth rates.

The stark assessment weighed that succeeding federal government failures in policy and drawing in financial investment had triggered Britain to miss out on the ‘industries 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 newest 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 earnings by 2030, which the main European country’s military will quickly surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and devices on the existing trajectory.

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

‘This is going to be accelerated decline unless we nip this in the bud and have vibrant leaders who are able to make the tough choices 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 uses a radio to speak to Archer teams from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery throughout a live fire variety on Rovajärvi Training Area, during Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

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

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

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‘Not only is the U.K. anticipated 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 particular 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 today, Russian and Ukrainian. Not a single European nation to mount a single heavy armoured brigade.’

‘This is a huge oversight on the part of subsequent governments, not simply Starmer’s issue, of failing to invest in our military and basically 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 actually lead European defence. But none of the European nations are.’

Slowed defence costs and patterns of low efficiency are nothing new. But Britain is now also ‘failing to change’ to the Trump administration’s shock to the rules-based worldwide order, said 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 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 said, ‘appears to be making progressively pricey gestures’ like the ₤ 9bn handover of the strategic Chagos 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 scrutiny.

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

Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security think thank warned at the time that ‘the move shows stressing strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government refers to as being characterised by excellent power competitors’.

Calls for the U.K. to offer reparations for its historic role in the slave trade were rekindled likewise in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a conference of Commonwealth nations that reparations would not be on the agenda.

A Challenger 2 primary 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 throughout a press conference in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

Dr Ibhramin evaluated that the U.K. appears to be acting versus its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of threat.

‘We comprehend soldiers and missiles however stop working to totally envisage the danger that having no alternative to China’s supply chains may have on our capability to respond to military hostility.’

He suggested a new security model to ‘enhance the U.K.’s strategic dynamism’ based on a rethink of migratory policy and risk evaluation, access to uncommon 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 atomic energy.

‘Without immediate policy changes to reignite growth, Britain will end up being a reduced power, reliant on stronger allies and vulnerable to foreign coercion,’ the Foreign Policy columnist stated.

‘As worldwide economic competition magnifies, the U.K. must choose whether to accept a strong growth program or resign itself to irreparable decrease.’

Britain’s commitment to the concept of Net Zero may be admirable, but the pursuit will prevent growth and obscure tactical goals, he cautioned.

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

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

Nuclear power, including making use of small modular reactors, might be a benefit for the British economy and energy independence.

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

Britain did present a new funding design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour political leaders had firmly insisted was essential to discovering the cash for expensive plant-building jobs.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation company, has been declared for its grants for small energy-producing business in your home, business owners have warned a broader culture of ‘danger aversion’ 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 picture of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has actually consistently failed to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian threat’, allowing the pattern of handled decline.

But the renewal of autocracies on the world stage dangers even more undermining the rules-based international order from which Britain ‘benefits tremendously’ as a globalised economy.

‘The danger to this order … has established partially because of the absence of a robust will to protect it, owing in part to deliberate foreign efforts to overturn the recognition of the true hiding threat they pose.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is insufficient. He prompted 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 essentially bodies that take up tremendous amounts of funds and they’ll just keep growing considerably,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You could double the NHS spending plan and it will actually not make much of a dent. So all of this will need fundamental reform and will take a great deal of nerve from whomever is in power because it will make them undesirable.’

The report lays out suggestions in extreme tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a renewed focus on securing Britain’s function as a leader in modern industries, energy security, and international trade.

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

File image. Britain’s financial stagnancy might see it soon become a ‘2nd tier’ partner

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

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

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of last year that Euro location financial efficiency has actually been ‘suppressed’ given that around 2018, showing ‘complex obstacles of energy reliance, making vulnerabilities, and shifting global trade dynamics’.

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

This remains vulnerable, however, with residents progressively agitated by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of budget friendly lodging and caught in low paying seasonal jobs.

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

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