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

Britain is on course to becoming a ‘second tier’ European country like Spain or Italy due to economic decrease and a weak military that undermines its usefulness to allies, an expert has alerted.

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

The stark assessment weighed that successive federal government failures in guideline and drawing in investment had caused Britain to lose out on the ‘industries 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 wrote 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 earnings by 2030, which the main European country’s military will soon go beyond the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and equipment on the current trajectory.

‘The problem is that as soon as we are devalued to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be almost difficult to return. Nations do not come back from this,’ Dr Ibrahim told MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be accelerated decrease unless we nip this in the bud and have vibrant leaders who are able to make the tough choices 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 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 cautioned much deeper, systemic issues threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a worldwide influential power.

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

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‘Not just is the U.K. forecasted to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, however also a smaller sized army and one that is not able to sustain implementation at scale.’

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

‘There are 230 brigades in Ukraine today, 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 federal governments, not just Starmer’s issue, of failing to buy our military and essentially outsourcing 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 base 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 spending and patterns of low performance are nothing brand-new. But Britain is now also ‘stopping working to adjust’ to the Trump administration’s jolt 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 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 stated, ‘seems to be making progressively pricey 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 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 revealed by the Labour federal government last October.

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

Calls for the U.K. to provide reparations for its historic role in the slave trade were rekindled 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 battle 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 and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk speak throughout an interview 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 rockets but fail to completely envisage the threat that having no alternative to China’s supply chains might have on our ability to react to military aggressiveness.’

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

‘Without immediate policy modifications to reignite growth, Britain will become a diminished power, reliant on more powerful allies and susceptible to foreign coercion,’ the Diplomacy columnist said.

‘As global financial competitors heightens, the U.K. must decide whether to welcome a strong development program or resign itself to irreparable decrease.’

Britain’s dedication to the idea of Net Zero may be admirable, but the pursuit will prevent growth and unknown tactical goals, he alerted.

‘I am not saying that the environment is not important. But we just can not manage to do this.

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

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

‘But we’ve stopped working to commercialise them and obviously that’s going to take a considerable quantity of time.’

Britain did present a new financing model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour political leaders had actually insisted was key to discovering the money for pricey plant-building jobs.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation company, has been declared for its grants for little energy-producing companies in the house, entrepreneurs have actually cautioned a broader culture of ‘danger hostility’ in the U.K. suppresses financial investment.

In 2022, incomes for the poorest 14 million people 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 managed decline.

But the resurgence of autocracies on the world stage risks further weakening the rules-based global order from which Britain ‘benefits enormously’ as a globalised economy.

‘The threat to this order … has developed partly since of the lack of a robust will to defend it, owing in part to deliberate foreign attempts to subvert the acknowledgment of the real hiding threat they position.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim cautioned that this is not enough. 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 quantities of funds and they’ll simply keep growing significantly,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You could double the NHS budget plan and it will really not make much of a damage. 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 undesirable.’

The report describes suggestions in radical tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a renewed focus on securing Britain’s function as a leader in high-tech markets, energy security, and international trade.

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

File image. Britain’s economic stagnancy might see it quickly become a ‘second 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 insistence that Europe pay for its own defence has cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s alarming scenario after decades of sluggish growth and minimized spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of last year that Euro location financial efficiency has actually been ‘suppressed’ since around 2018, illustrating ‘multifaceted challenges of energy reliance, producing vulnerabilities, and moving worldwide trade dynamics’.

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

This stays fragile, nevertheless, with citizens significantly upset by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of budget-friendly accommodation and trapped in low paying seasonal jobs.

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

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