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

Britain is on course to ending up being a ‘second tier’ European nation like Spain or Italy due to financial decline and a weak military that undermines its effectiveness to allies, an expert has actually cautioned.

Research professor Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning new report that the U.K. has 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 successive government failures in regulation and attracting investment had actually caused Britain to miss 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 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 evaluates that Britain is now on track to fall back Poland in terms of per capita income by 2030, and that the main European country’s armed force will soon go beyond the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and devices on the present trajectory.

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

‘This is going to be sped up decrease unless we nip this in the bud and have vibrant leaders who have the ability to make the tough 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 talk to 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 costs to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, however cautioned much deeper, systemic concerns threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a globally influential power.

With a weakening industrial 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 also a smaller army and one that is unable to sustain implementation at scale.’

This is of particular issue 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 a massive oversight on the part of subsequent federal governments, not simply Starmer’s problem, of stopping working to invest in our military and essentially outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,’ he told MailOnline.

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

Slowed defence costs and patterns of low efficiency are nothing 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 as soon as ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is reacting by hurting the last vestiges of its military may and financial power.

The U.K., he said, ‘appears to be making increasingly 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 Indian Ocean has actually been the source of much scrutiny.

Negotiations 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 think thank warned at the time that ‘the relocation shows worrying tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government refers to as being characterised by fantastic power competition’.

Require the U.K. to provide reparations for its historical function in the slave trade were rekindled also in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a conference of Commonwealth nations that reparations would not be on the .

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 Starmer and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk speak during a press conference in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

Dr Ibhramin examined that the U.K. seems to be acting against its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of danger.

‘We understand soldiers and missiles but fail to totally envisage 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 ‘boost the U.K.’s tactical dynamism’ based on a rethink of migratory policy and danger evaluation, access to rare earth minerals in a market dominated 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 become a decreased power, reliant on stronger allies and susceptible to foreign browbeating,’ the Diplomacy writer stated.

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

Britain’s commitment to the idea of Net Zero might be admirable, but the pursuit will inhibit development and obscure tactical objectives, he warned.

‘I am not stating that the environment is not essential. But we merely can not afford to do this.

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

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

‘But we have actually failed to commercialise them and obviously that’s going to take a significant amount 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 crucial to discovering the cash for pricey plant-building projects.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development agency, has been heralded for its grants for little energy-producing business in the house, entrepreneurs have cautioned a wider culture of ‘danger aversion’ 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 image of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has consistently stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian risk’, permitting the trend of handled decrease.

But the resurgence of autocracies on the world phase threats further undermining the rules-based worldwide order from which Britain ‘advantages immensely’ as a globalised economy.

‘The threat to this order … has actually established partially since of the lack of a robust will to safeguard it, owing in part to ponder foreign efforts to subvert the acknowledgment of the true lurking threat they posture.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim cautioned that this is inadequate. He prompted a top-down reform of ‘essentially 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 immense amounts of funds and they’ll just keep growing considerably,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You might double the NHS spending plan and it will actually not make much of a damage. So all of this will need essential reform and will take a lot of guts from whomever is in power since it will make them unpopular.’

The report lays out suggestions in radical tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a restored focus on protecting Britain’s function as a leader in state-of-the-art markets, energy security, and international trade.

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

File picture. Britain’s economic stagnation could see it quickly end up being a ‘second tier’ partner

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

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

The Centre for Economic Policy Research assessed at the end of in 2015 that Euro location economic performance has been ‘controlled’ considering that around 2018, illustrating ‘complex obstacles of energy dependency, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and moving global trade characteristics’.

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

This stays fragile, however, with locals progressively upset by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of affordable lodging and trapped in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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