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

Britain is on course to ending up being a ‘second tier’ European country like Spain or Italy due to economic decrease and a weak military that weakens its usefulness to allies, a specialist has warned.

Research professor Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning brand-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 present development rates.

The stark assessment weighed that successive government failures in guideline and drawing in investment had caused Britain to miss out on 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 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 behind Poland in regards to per capita income by 2030, which the central European country’s armed force will quickly go beyond the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and equipment on the existing trajectory.

‘The issue is that when we are downgraded to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be virtually impossible to return. 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 bold leaders who have the ability to make the tough choices today.’

People pass boarded up shops 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 with Archer teams from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery during a live fire variety on Rovajärvi Training Area, throughout 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 problems threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a worldwide prominent power.

With a weakening industrial 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. anticipated to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, but also a smaller sized army and one that is unable to sustain deployment at scale.’

This is of specific concern 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 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 governments, not just Starmer’s issue, of stopping working to invest in our military and essentially outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting fatigue of supplying the security umbrella to Europe, Europe now has to stand on its own and the U.K. would have remained in a to actually lead European defence. But none of the European nations are.’

Slowed defence costs and patterns of low efficiency are absolutely nothing new. But Britain is now also ‘failing to change’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based global 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 institutions 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 stated, ‘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 actually been the source of much examination.

Negotiations in between the U.K. and Mauritius were started by the Tories in 2022, but 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 move shows stressing tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government describes as being characterised by terrific power competitors’.

Calls for the U.K. to supply reparations for its historical role in the slave trade were revived likewise in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the agenda.

A Challenger 2 primary 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 Starmer and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk speak during 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 danger.

‘We understand soldiers and rockets but stop working to completely envisage the risk that having no option to China’s supply chains may have on our ability to react to military aggressiveness.’

He suggested a new security model to ‘boost the U.K.’s tactical dynamism’ based on a rethink of migratory policy and danger assessment, 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 immediate policy modifications to reignite development, Britain will end up being a reduced power, reliant on stronger allies and susceptible to foreign coercion,’ the Foreign Policy writer said.

‘As global financial competitors heightens, the U.K. must decide whether to accept a bold growth program or resign itself to irreversible decrease.’

Britain’s commitment to the concept of Net Zero might be laudable, but the pursuit will prevent growth and obscure tactical goals, he alerted.

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

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

Nuclear power, consisting of making use of little modular reactors, might be an advantage for the British economy and energy independence.

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

Britain did introduce a brand-new financing design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour politicians had insisted was crucial to finding the cash for costly plant-building jobs.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation company, has been declared for its grants for little energy-producing business in your home, business owners have actually warned a broader culture of ‘threat hostility’ in the U.K. suppresses 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 picture of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has actually consistently stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian risk’, enabling the trend of managed decrease.

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

‘The risk to this order … has established partially because of the lack of a robust will to protect it, owing in part to ponder foreign attempts to subvert the recognition of the real prowling risk they present.’

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 seriousness of buying defence.

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is inadequate. He advised a top-down reform of ‘basically 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 use up tremendous amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing considerably,’ he told MailOnline.

‘You might double the NHS spending plan and it will actually not make much of a damage. So all of this will need basic reform and will take a lot of nerve from whomever is in power due to the fact that it will make them undesirable.’

The report describes recommendations in extreme tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a renewed focus on protecting Britain’s function as a leader in state-of-the-art markets, energy security, and worldwide trade.

Vladimir Putin talks with the governor of Arkhangelsk region Alexander Tsybulsky throughout their meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, March 11, 2025

File photo. Britain’s economic stagnancy might see it soon end up being a ‘2nd 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 spend for its own defence has cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire situation after years of sluggish growth and minimized costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research assessed at the end of in 2015 that Euro area financial efficiency has actually been ‘subdued’ given that around 2018, highlighting ‘complex obstacles of energy dependence, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and moving international trade dynamics’.

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

This stays delicate, nevertheless, with citizens significantly agitated by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of cost effective accommodation and caught in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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