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 undermines its effectiveness to allies, a specialist has actually cautioned.

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

The plain assessment weighed that successive federal government failures in policy and drawing in financial investment had actually caused Britain to miss out on 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 composed in The Henry Jackson Society’s newest report, Prosperity: The Case for Economic Growth as a National Security Priority.

The report evaluates that Britain is now on track to fall behind Poland in terms of per capita income by 2030, and that the main European nation’s military will soon surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and equipment on the current trajectory.

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

‘This is going to be sped up decrease unless we nip this in the bud and have vibrant leaders who are able to make the tough decisions today.’

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, throughout Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

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

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

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‘Not only is the U.K. forecasted to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, but likewise 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 quick rearmament task.

‘There are 230 brigades in Ukraine right now, 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 federal governments, not just Starmer’s problem, of stopping working to purchase 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 needs to stand on its own and the U.K. would have been in a premium position to in fact lead European defence. But none of the European nations are.’

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

The previous consultant to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review kept in mind in the report that in spite of the ‘weakening’ of the organizations once ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is reacting by damaging the last vestiges of its military may and economic power.

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

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

Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security believe thank warned at the time that ‘the move demonstrates stressing tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government describes as being characterised by fantastic power competitors’.

Calls for the U.K. to offer reparations for its historical role in the servant trade were rekindled likewise in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth nations that reparations would not be on the program.

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

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

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

He suggested a new security design to ‘improve the U.K.’s tactical dynamism’ based upon a rethink of migratory policy and risk evaluation, access to unusual earth minerals in a market dominated by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and independence through financial investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on nuclear energy.

‘Without immediate policy changes to reignite development, Britain will become a lessened power, reliant on more powerful allies and vulnerable to foreign browbeating,’ the Diplomacy columnist stated.

‘As global financial competition magnifies, the U.K. must decide whether to embrace a bold growth agenda or resign itself to irreparable decrease.’

Britain’s commitment to the concept of Net Zero may be admirable, however the pursuit will prevent development and odd tactical objectives, he cautioned.

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

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

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

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

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

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation firm, has been declared for its grants for little energy-producing companies at home, entrepreneurs have actually cautioned a broader culture of ‘danger 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 image of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has actually regularly failed to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian hazard’, enabling the pattern of managed decline.

But the resurgence of autocracies on the world phase threats even more weakening the rules-based global order from which Britain ‘benefits immensely’ as a globalised economy.

‘The threat to this order … has actually established partly since of the absence of a robust will to safeguard it, owing in part to ponder foreign attempts to subvert the acknowledgment of the true prowling danger they pose.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is insufficient. He prompted 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 enormous amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing significantly,’ he told MailOnline.

‘You might double the NHS budget and it will really not make much of a damage. So all of this will need fundamental 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 radical tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a renewed focus on securing Britain’s role as a leader in high-tech industries, energy security, and global trade.

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

File picture. Britain’s financial stagnation might see it quickly become a ‘second 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 spend for its own defence has cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire scenario after years of slow development and lowered spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research evaluated at the end of in 2015 that Euro area financial efficiency has actually been ‘subdued’ since around 2018, highlighting ‘multifaceted difficulties of energy reliance, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and shifting international trade dynamics’.

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

This stays fragile, however, with homeowners increasingly upset by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of budget-friendly accommodation and caught in low paying seasonal jobs.

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

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