Poland Set to ‘Soon 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 armed force that undermines its effectiveness to allies, a professional has actually alerted.

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 might see it lose its standing as a top-tier middle power at existing development rates.

The stark evaluation weighed that successive government failures in guideline and attracting financial investment had actually triggered Britain to lose 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 most current report, Strategic 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 regards to per capita income by 2030, and that the central European country’s military will quickly go beyond the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and equipment on the present trajectory.

‘The concern is that as soon as we are reduced to a second tier middle power, it’s going to be practically impossible to return. Nations do not return 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 are able to make the difficult choices 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 throughout a live fire range on Rovajärvi Training Area, during Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim invited the government’s decision to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, however warned much deeper, systemic concerns threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as an internationally influential power.

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

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

This is of specific issue 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 today, Russian and Ukrainian. Not a single European nation to install a single heavy armoured brigade.’

‘This is a massive oversight on the part of subsequent 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 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 in fact lead European defence. But none of the European countries are.’

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

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

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

Negotiations between the U.K. and Mauritius were begun by the Tories in 2022, but an agreement was revealed 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. federal government refers to as being characterised by great power competitors’.

Calls for the U.K. to offer reparations for its historical function in the servant trade were likewise in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer said ahead of a conference of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the program.

An Opposition 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 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 understand soldiers and rockets however fail to totally envisage the threat that having no alternative to China’s supply chains might have on our ability to react to military aggression.’

He recommended a brand-new security model to ‘improve the U.K.’s tactical dynamism’ based on a rethink of migratory policy and risk evaluation, access to uncommon earth minerals in a market dominated by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and independence via financial investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on atomic energy.

‘Without instant policy modifications to reignite growth, Britain will end up being a lessened power, reliant on stronger allies and susceptible to foreign browbeating,’ the Diplomacy writer said.

‘As worldwide economic competitors magnifies, the U.K. should decide whether to embrace a bold growth agenda or resign itself to irreparable decline.’

Britain’s commitment to the concept of Net Zero may be laudable, however the pursuit will prevent development and unknown strategic objectives, he alerted.

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

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

Nuclear power, including using little modular reactors, might be an advantage for the British economy and energy independence.

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

Britain did present a brand-new financing design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour political leaders had actually firmly insisted was key to discovering the cash for costly plant-building tasks.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation company, has actually been declared for its grants for small energy-producing companies at home, entrepreneurs have actually cautioned a larger culture of ‘risk hostility’ in the U.K. stifles 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’, allowing the pattern of handled decrease.

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

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

The Trump administration’s warning 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 urgency of investing in defence.

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is not enough. He urged a top-down reform of ‘essentially our whole state’ to bring the ossified state back to life and sustain it.

‘Reforming the well-being state, reforming the NHS, reforming pensions – these are essentially bodies that take up immense quantities of funds and they’ll just keep growing significantly,’ he told MailOnline.

‘You could double the NHS spending plan and it will actually not make much of a dent. So all of this will need fundamental reform and will take a lot of nerve from whomever is in power since it will make them undesirable.’

The report details recommendations in extreme tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a renewed concentrate on protecting Britain’s function as a leader in modern industries, energy security, and worldwide trade.

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

File image. Britain’s economic stagnancy might see it quickly become 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 insistence that Europe spend for its own defence has cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s alarming scenario after years of sluggish development and lowered costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research assessed at the end of last year that Euro area economic efficiency has actually been ‘controlled’ given that around 2018, highlighting ‘multifaceted obstacles of energy dependency, making vulnerabilities, and moving global trade dynamics’.

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

This remains fragile, nevertheless, with locals increasingly agitated by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of cost effective 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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