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

Britain is on course to ending up being a ‘2nd tier’ European country like Spain or Italy due to economic decrease and a weak armed force that weakens its usefulness to allies, an expert has actually warned.

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 misdirected policies that might see it lose its standing as a top-tier middle power at current growth rates.

The plain assessment weighed that successive federal government failures in regulation and bring in financial investment had triggered Britain to lose out on the ‘markets of the future’ courted by established economies.

‘Britain no longer has the commercial base to logistically sustain a war with a near-peer like Russia for more than 2 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 examines that Britain is now on track to fall back Poland in terms of per capita income by 2030, which the main European country’s armed force will soon exceed the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and devices on the present trajectory.

‘The problem is that as soon as we are devalued to a second tier middle power, it’s going to be virtually impossible to return. Nations do not come back from this,’ Dr Ibrahim informed MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be accelerated decrease unless we nip this in the bud and have bold 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 refills his rifle on February 17, 2025 in Smardan, Romania

Staff Sergeant Rai utilizes a radio to speak with 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 spending 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 an internationally influential power.

With a weakening commercial base, Britain’s usefulness 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 not able to sustain deployment at scale.’

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

‘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 massive oversight on the part of subsequent federal governments, not just Starmer’s issue, of stopping working to invest in our military and basically outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting fatigue of offering 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 in fact lead European defence. But none of the European countries are.’

Slowed defence costs and patterns of low performance are nothing brand-new. But Britain is now likewise ‘stopping working to adjust’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based worldwide order, said Dr Ibrahim.

The previous consultant to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review noted in the report that in spite of the ‘weakening’ of the organizations as soon as ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is reacting by harming the last vestiges of its military might and economic power.

The U.K., he said, ‘appears to be making significantly 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 has been the source of much examination.

Negotiations in between the U.K. and Mauritius were started by the Tories in 2022, however a contract was revealed by the Labour 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 stressing tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government describes as being characterised by terrific power competitors’.

Require the U.K. to provide reparations for its historical role in the slave trade were rekindled also in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a conference of Commonwealth nations that reparations would not be on the agenda.

An Opposition 2 primary battle tank of the British forces during 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 against its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of risk.

‘We understand soldiers and missiles however stop working to totally envisage the threat that having no alternative to China’s supply chains may have on our ability to react to military hostility.’

He recommended a new security model to ‘enhance the U.K.’s tactical dynamism’ based upon a rethink of migratory policy and danger evaluation, access to rare earth minerals in a market controlled by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and self-reliance via investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on atomic energy.

‘Without instant policy modifications to reignite growth, Britain will become a diminished power, reliant on stronger allies and vulnerable to foreign coercion,’ the Foreign Policy columnist said.

‘As global financial competitors intensifies, the U.K. must choose whether to embrace a bold growth program or resign itself to irreversible decrease.’

Britain’s commitment to the idea of Net Zero may be admirable, but the pursuit will prevent development and odd strategic goals, he warned.

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

‘We are a country that has actually failed to purchase our economic, in our energy facilities. And we have substantial resources at our disposal.’

Nuclear power, including the usage of small modular reactors, could be a benefit for the British economy and energy self-reliance.

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

Britain did introduce a brand-new financing model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour politicians had firmly insisted was crucial to discovering the cash for pricey plant-building projects.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development firm, has been declared for its grants for small energy-producing companies at home, business owners have actually alerted a larger culture of ‘threat aversion’ in the U.K. suppresses financial investment.

In 2022, earnings 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 actually regularly stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian danger’, enabling the pattern of managed decrease.

But the revival of autocracies on the world phase threats further weakening the rules-based international order from which Britain ‘benefits tremendously’ as a globalised economy.

‘The risk to this order … has actually established partly because of the lack of a robust will to safeguard it, owing in part to deliberate foreign efforts to subvert the acknowledgment of the true hiding danger they posture.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is insufficient. He advised a top-down reform of ‘essentially our entire state’ to bring the ossified state back to life and sustain it.

‘Reforming the welfare state, reforming the NHS, reforming pensions – these are basically bodies that take up tremendous amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing significantly,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You might double the NHS budget plan and it will really not make much of a damage. So all of this will require essential reform and will take a great deal of nerve from whomever is in power due to the fact that it will make them out of favor.’

The report lays out suggestions in radical tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a restored focus on protecting Britain’s function as a leader in modern industries, energy security, and global trade.

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

File photo. Britain’s financial stagnancy might see it soon end up being a ‘2nd tier’ partner

Boarded-up stores 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 spend for its own defence has cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire situation after years of sluggish development and reduced spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of in 2015 that Euro area economic efficiency has been ‘controlled’ since around 2018, illustrating ‘multifaceted obstacles of energy dependency, producing vulnerabilities, and shifting global trade characteristics’.

There remain profound disparities 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 stays fragile, nevertheless, with homeowners increasingly agitated by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of inexpensive lodging 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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