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

Britain is on course to ending up being a ‘second tier’ European country like Spain or Italy due to economic decrease and a weak armed force that weakens its effectiveness to allies, a professional has alerted.

Research teacher Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning brand-new report that the U.K. has actually 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 present growth rates.

The stark evaluation weighed that successive government failures in policy and bring in financial investment had actually triggered Britain to miss out on out on the ‘industries 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 wrote in The Henry Jackson Society’s newest report, Strategic Prosperity: The Case for Economic Growth as a National Security Priority.

The report assesses that Britain is now on track to fall back Poland in terms of per capita earnings by 2030, and that the central European nation’s armed force will soon go beyond the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and devices on the existing trajectory.

‘The problem is that when we are reduced to a second tier middle power, it’s going to be almost impossible to get back. 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 bold leaders who have the ability to make the tough decisions today.’

People pass boarded up shops 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 with Archer crews from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery throughout a live fire variety on Rovajärvi Training Area, during Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim invited the federal government’s choice to increase defence spending 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 worldwide 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. anticipated to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, but likewise a smaller army and one that is unable to sustain implementation at scale.’

This is of specific issue at a time of heightened geopolitical tension, with Britain pegged to be amongst the leading forces in Europe’s quick rearmament job.

‘There are 230 brigades in Ukraine today, Russian and Ukrainian. Not a single European country to install a single heavy armoured brigade.’

‘This is a huge oversight on the part of subsequent governments, not simply Starmer’s problem, of failing to invest in our military and essentially contracting out security to the United States and NATO,’ he told MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting fatigue of supplying 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 efficiency are nothing new. But Britain is now also ‘failing to change’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based global order, stated Dr Ibrahim.

The previous advisor to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review noted in the report that in spite of the ‘weakening’ of the institutions when ‘protected’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by damaging the last vestiges of its military might and financial power.

The U.K., he said, ‘appears to be making progressively 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 been the source of much analysis.

Negotiations in between the U.K. and Mauritius were begun by the Tories in 2022, however an arrangement was revealed by the Labour federal government last October.

Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security believe thank cautioned at the time that ‘the relocation shows stressing tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government refers to as being characterised by great power competition’.

Calls for the U.K. to supply reparations for its historical role in the servant trade were revived also in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer said ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth nations that reparations would not be on the program.

An Opposition 2 primary fight tank of the British forces throughout 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 a press conference 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 missiles however fail to totally develop of the risk that having no option to China’s supply chains might have on our capability to react to military aggressiveness.’

He suggested a new security design to ‘enhance the U.K.’s tactical dynamism’ based on a rethink of migratory policy and risk assessment, access to unusual 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 become a decreased power, reliant on stronger allies and susceptible to foreign browbeating,’ the Foreign Policy writer said.

‘As worldwide economic competition heightens, the U.K. needs to decide whether to embrace a strong growth program or resign itself to irreversible decrease.’

Britain’s dedication to the idea of Net Zero might be laudable, but the pursuit will inhibit development and odd tactical goals, he cautioned.

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

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

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

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

Britain did present a new funding design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour political leaders had firmly insisted was essential to discovering the cash for pricey plant-building tasks.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation firm, has been declared for its grants for small energy-producing business in the house, entrepreneurs have cautioned a wider culture of ‘threat hostility’ in the U.K. stifles financial investment.

In 2022, incomes for the poorest 14 million individuals 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 regularly failed to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian risk’, enabling the pattern of handled decrease.

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

‘The risk to this order … has actually developed partially because of the absence of a robust will to defend it, owing in part to ponder foreign efforts to overturn the acknowledgment of the real hiding 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 way towards waking Britain approximately the urgency of purchasing defence.

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is insufficient. He prompted 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 basically bodies that take up immense quantities of funds and they’ll simply keep growing substantially,’ he informed MailOnline.

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

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

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

File image. Britain’s economic stagnancy could see it soon end up being a ‘second tier’ partner

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

Britain is not alone in falling back. The Trump administration’s persistence that Europe spend for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s alarming situation after years of sluggish development and lowered costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research assessed at the end of last year that Euro location economic efficiency has been ‘subdued’ since around 2018, obstacles of energy dependence, making vulnerabilities, and shifting international trade dynamics’.

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

This remains delicate, nevertheless, with homeowners progressively agitated by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of affordable accommodation and trapped in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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