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 decrease and a weak military that weakens its usefulness to allies, a professional has alerted.

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

The stark evaluation weighed that succeeding government failures in policy and bring in financial investment had caused 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 assesses that Britain is now on track to fall behind Poland in terms of per capita earnings by 2030, and that the central European country’s armed force will quickly surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and equipment on the current trajectory.

‘The concern is that when we are devalued to a second tier middle power, it’s going to be almost difficult to get back. Nations don’t 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 strong leaders who have the ability to make the difficult decisions today.’

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

A British soldier reloads 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 throughout a live fire variety on Rovajärvi Training Area, during Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim invited 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 globally influential power.

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

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‘Not only is the U.K. forecasted 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 concern at a time of heightened geopolitical stress, with Britain pegged to be amongst the leading forces in Europe’s quick rearmament job.

‘There are 230 brigades in Ukraine right now, Russian and Ukrainian. Not a single European country to install a single heavy armoured brigade.’

‘This is an enormous 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 tiredness of offering the security umbrella to Europe, Europe now needs to base 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 countries are.’

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

The former consultant to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review kept in mind 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 may and financial power.

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

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

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

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

A Challenger 2 main battle 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 an interview in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

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

‘We comprehend soldiers and rockets but stop working to totally envisage the risk that having no alternative to China’s supply chains may have on our ability to react to military hostility.’

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

‘Without instant policy modifications to reignite growth, Britain will end up being a reduced power, reliant on more powerful allies and susceptible to foreign browbeating,’ the Diplomacy writer said.

‘As worldwide financial competition intensifies, the U.K. must decide whether to embrace a bold growth agenda or resign itself to irreversible decrease.’

Britain’s dedication to the idea of Net Zero may be admirable, however the pursuit will hinder growth and obscure strategic goals, he alerted.

‘I am not stating that the environment is not crucial. But we simply can not manage to do this.

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

Nuclear power, consisting of using small modular reactors, could be a boon for the British economy and energy independence.

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

Britain did present a brand-new funding model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour politicians had actually firmly insisted was key to finding the cash for pricey plant-building projects.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation company, has actually been declared for its grants for small energy-producing companies in the house, business owners have cautioned a wider culture of ‘risk hostility’ in the U.K. stifles 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 consistently failed to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian danger’, permitting the pattern of managed decrease.

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

‘The risk to this order … has actually established partly because of the absence of a robust will to defend it, owing in part to deliberate foreign attempts to overturn the recognition of the true prowling threat they posture.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim alerted that this is insufficient. He urged 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 enormous amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing considerably,’ he told MailOnline.

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

The report details recommendations in radical tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a restored focus on securing Britain’s role as a leader in high-tech industries, energy security, and international trade.

Vladimir Putin consults with the guv of Arkhangelsk area Alexander Tsybulsky throughout their meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, March 11, 2025

File picture. Britain’s financial stagnancy could see it soon end up being a ‘second tier’ partner

Boarded-up shops 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 persistence that Europe pay for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire scenario after years of slow development and decreased spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of last year that Euro area economic efficiency has actually been ‘suppressed’ considering that around 2018, illustrating ‘diverse difficulties of energy dependency, making vulnerabilities, and shifting international trade dynamics’.

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

This remains delicate, however, with citizens significantly agitated by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of affordable lodging and trapped in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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