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 financial decline and a weak armed force that weakens its effectiveness to allies, an expert has actually warned.

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

The stark assessment weighed that successive government failures in regulation and attracting investment had actually caused Britain to lose out on the ‘markets 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 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 income by 2030, and that the central European country’s military will soon exceed the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and equipment on the existing trajectory.

‘The problem is that as soon as we are downgraded to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be almost impossible to return. Nations don’t return from this,’ Dr Ibrahim informed MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be accelerated decline unless we nip this in the bud and have vibrant leaders who are able to make the challenging decisions right now.’

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

Dr Ibrahim invited the federal government’s choice to increase defence costs to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, but alerted much deeper, systemic problems threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as an internationally prominent power.

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

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‘Not only is the U.K. anticipated to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, however likewise a smaller army and one that is unable to sustain release at scale.’

This is of particular concern at a time of increased geopolitical stress, with Britain pegged to be amongst the leading forces in Europe’s rapid 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 federal governments, not just Starmer’s problem, of failing to invest in our military and essentially contracting out 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 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 nations are.’

Slowed defence costs and patterns of low productivity are nothing brand-new. But Britain is now likewise ‘failing to change’ to the Trump administration’s shock 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 organizations when ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is reacting by hurting the last vestiges of its military might and economic power.

The U.K., he stated, ‘seems to be making significantly costly gestures’ like the ₤ 9bn handover of the tactical 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 examination.

Negotiations between the U.K. and Mauritius were begun by the Tories in 2022, however 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 move demonstrates worrying strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government describes as being characterised by great power competitors’.

Require the U.K. to offer reparations for its historical function in the servant trade were rekindled also in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer said ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the agenda.

A Challenger 2 primary fight tank of the British forces throughout 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 assessed that the U.K. appears to be acting versus its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of danger.

‘We understand soldiers and missiles however fail to completely envisage the threat that having no option to China’s supply chains may have on our capability to react to military aggression.’

He suggested a brand-new security design to ‘improve the U.K.’s strategic dynamism’ based upon a rethink of migratory policy and hazard evaluation, access to rare earth minerals in a market controlled by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and self-reliance by means of financial 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 more powerful allies and vulnerable to foreign browbeating,’ the Diplomacy columnist stated.

‘As worldwide economic competitors heightens, the U.K. needs to decide whether to welcome a strong development program or resign itself to irreparable decline.’

Britain’s dedication to the idea of Net Zero might be admirable, however the pursuit will hinder growth and odd tactical goals, he alerted.

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

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

Nuclear power, including making use of little modular reactors, might be a benefit for the British economy and energy independence.

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

Britain did present a new financing design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour political leaders had insisted was essential to finding the cash for expensive plant-building jobs.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development company, has been heralded for its grants for little energy-producing companies in your home, business owners have actually warned a wider culture of ‘danger aversion’ in the U.K. stifles 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 failed to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian hazard’, enabling the trend of managed decrease.

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

‘The threat to this order … has established partially because of the lack of a robust will to defend it, owing in part to deliberate foreign efforts to subvert the acknowledgment of the true prowling danger 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 investing in defence.

But Dr Ibrahim alerted 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 basically bodies that use up tremendous amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing significantly,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You could double the NHS budget and it will truly not make much of a damage. So all of this will need fundamental reform and will take a great deal of nerve from whomever is in power due to the fact that it will make them unpopular.’

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 high-tech industries, energy security, and global trade.

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

File picture. Britain’s economic stagnancy could see it soon end up being a ‘2nd tier’ partner

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

Britain is not alone in falling behind. The Trump administration’s insistence that Europe pay for its own has cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s alarming scenario after years of slow growth and minimized costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research evaluated at the end of in 2015 that Euro area economic performance has been ‘controlled’ considering that around 2018, showing ‘diverse challenges of energy dependence, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and moving global trade dynamics’.

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

This remains vulnerable, however, with homeowners increasingly upset by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of budget friendly accommodation and trapped in low paying seasonal tasks.

The Henry Jackson Society is a foreign policy and national security believe thank based in the United Kingdom.

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