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

Britain is on course to ending up being a ‘2nd tier’ European nation like Spain or Italy due to economic decrease and a weak armed force that undermines its usefulness to allies, an expert 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 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 attracting financial investment had caused Britain to lose out on the ‘markets of the future’ courted by established 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 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 behind Poland in terms of per capita income by 2030, and that the central European country’s armed force will quickly surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and devices on the current trajectory.

‘The concern is that as soon as 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 told MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be sped up decline unless we nip this in the bud and have vibrant leaders who have the ability to make the difficult decisions right now.’

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 with Archer crews from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery during a live fire range on Rovajärvi Training Area, throughout Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim welcomed the government’s decision to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, however alerted much deeper, systemic issues threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a globally influential power.

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

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

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

‘There are 230 brigades in Ukraine today, Russian and Ukrainian. Not a single European nation to install 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 purchase our military and basically outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,’ he told 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 nations are.’

Slowed defence spending and patterns of low efficiency are nothing new. But Britain is now likewise ‘failing to adjust’ to the Trump administration’s shock to the rules-based international 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 when ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is reacting by damaging the last vestiges of its military may and financial power.

The U.K., he said, ‘seems to be making increasingly expensive 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 analysis.

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

Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security believe thank cautioned at the time that ‘the relocation demonstrates fretting strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government explains as being characterised by excellent power competitors’.

Calls for the U.K. to supply reparations for its historic function in the slave trade were rekindled also in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a conference of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the program.

An Opposition 2 main fight 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 an interview in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

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

‘We comprehend soldiers and rockets but fail to totally conceive of the risk that having no option to China’s supply chains may have on our ability to react to military hostility.’

He suggested a brand-new security model to ‘enhance the U.K.’s strategic dynamism’ based upon a rethink of migratory policy and danger evaluation, access to uncommon earth minerals in a market controlled by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and independence by means of financial investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on atomic energy.

‘Without immediate policy changes to reignite development, Britain will end up being a diminished power, reliant on more powerful allies and vulnerable to foreign browbeating,’ the Diplomacy columnist said.

‘As worldwide financial competition heightens, the U.K. should decide whether to accept a vibrant growth agenda or resign itself to irreversible decline.’

Britain’s commitment to the idea of Net Zero may be laudable, however the pursuit will hinder growth and unknown tactical goals, he warned.

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

‘We are a nation that has failed to buy our economic, in our energy infrastructure. And we have substantial resources at our disposal.’

Nuclear power, including using small modular reactors, might be a boon for the British economy and energy independence.

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

Britain did introduce a brand-new financing model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour political leaders had actually firmly insisted was essential to finding the cash for pricey plant-building tasks.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development agency, has been declared for its grants for small energy-producing business in the house, entrepreneurs have cautioned a wider culture of ‘risk hostility’ 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 image of The British Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has actually regularly stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian danger’, allowing the pattern of handled decline.

But the renewal of autocracies on the world stage threats even more undermining the rules-based global order from which Britain ‘advantages enormously’ as a globalised economy.

‘The hazard to this order … has developed partially because of the lack of a robust will to protect it, owing in part to ponder foreign attempts to subvert the acknowledgment of the real hiding threat they pose.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim cautioned that this is not enough. 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 essentially bodies that take up enormous amounts of funds and they’ll just keep growing substantially,’ he told MailOnline.

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

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

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

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

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

Britain is not alone in falling behind. The Trump administration’s persistence that Europe pay for its own defence has cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire scenario after years of sluggish development and decreased spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research assessed at the end of in 2015 that Euro area economic efficiency has been ‘suppressed’ since around 2018, highlighting ‘diverse obstacles of energy dependency, making vulnerabilities, and shifting international trade characteristics’.

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

This stays delicate, nevertheless, with citizens increasingly upset by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of inexpensive accommodation 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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