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

Britain is on course to becoming a ‘2nd tier’ European country like Spain or Italy due to financial decline and a weak armed force that weakens its usefulness to allies, a specialist has cautioned.

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 misdirected policies that might see it lose its standing as a top-tier middle power at present growth rates.

The plain evaluation weighed that succeeding government failures in policy and attracting financial investment had actually triggered Britain to miss out on the ‘industries of the future’ courted by developed economies.

‘Britain no longer has the commercial 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 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 regards to per capita earnings by 2030, and that the central European country’s military will quickly exceed the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and devices on the present trajectory.

‘The issue is that once we are downgraded to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be practically difficult to return. Nations don’t return from this,’ Dr Ibrahim told MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be unless we nip this in the bud and have strong leaders who have the ability 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 speak to Archer teams from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery throughout a live fire variety on Rovajärvi Training Area, throughout Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim invited the government’s decision to increase defence costs to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, however warned much deeper, systemic problems 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 behind even second-tier European powers’, he warned.

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‘Not just is the U.K. predicted to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, but likewise a smaller sized army and one that is unable to sustain implementation at scale.’

This is of particular concern at a time of increased geopolitical tension, with Britain pegged to be among the leading forces in Europe’s rapid rearmament project.

‘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 huge oversight on the part of subsequent governments, not just Starmer’s problem, of stopping working to buy our military and basically contracting out security to the United States and NATO,’ he told MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting tiredness of providing the security umbrella to Europe, Europe now has to stand on its own and the U.K. would have remained in a premium position to really lead European defence. But none of the European nations are.’

Slowed defence spending and patterns of low productivity are absolutely nothing new. But Britain is now also ‘stopping working to change’ to the Trump administration’s shock to the rules-based international order, stated 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 once ‘protected’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by damaging the last vestiges of its military may and economic power.

The U.K., he said, ‘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 actually been the source of much examination.

Negotiations in between the U.K. and Mauritius were started by the Tories in 2022, but 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 alerted at the time that ‘the relocation shows worrying tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government explains as being characterised by fantastic power competition’.

Calls for the U.K. to supply reparations for its historic role in the slave trade were rekindled likewise in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer said ahead of a conference of Commonwealth nations that reparations would not be on the program.

An Opposition 2 main 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 a press conference in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

Dr Ibhramin evaluated 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 stop working to fully envisage the risk that having no alternative to China’s supply chains may have on our capability to react to military aggressiveness.’

He recommended a new security model to ‘enhance the U.K.’s strategic dynamism’ based on a rethink of migratory policy and threat assessment, access to rare earth minerals in a market dominated by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and independence through investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on atomic energy.

‘Without instant policy changes to reignite development, Britain will end up being a lessened power, reliant on more powerful allies and susceptible to foreign browbeating,’ the Diplomacy columnist stated.

‘As worldwide financial competition magnifies, the U.K. needs to decide whether to embrace a vibrant development agenda or resign itself to permanent decrease.’

Britain’s dedication to the idea of Net Zero might be laudable, however the pursuit will inhibit development and unknown strategic objectives, he cautioned.

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

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

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

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

Britain did present a brand-new funding model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour politicians had insisted was key to finding the money for costly plant-building tasks.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation agency, has actually been heralded for its grants for small energy-producing business in your home, business owners have actually alerted a wider culture of ‘threat aversion’ 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 consistently stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian risk’, enabling the pattern of managed decline.

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

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

The Trump administration’s warning to NATO allies in Europe that they will have to do their own bidding has gone some method towards waking Britain approximately the urgency of buying defence.

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is inadequate. He urged a top-down reform of ‘basically our entire 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 amounts of funds and they’ll simply 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 require basic reform and will take a lot of guts from whomever is in power since it will make them undesirable.’

The report describes recommendations in extreme tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a restored concentrate on securing Britain’s function as a leader in high-tech industries, energy security, and worldwide trade.

Vladimir Putin consults with the governor of Arkhangelsk area Alexander Tsybulsky throughout their meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, March 11, 2025

File image. Britain’s economic stagnancy might see it soon become a ‘2nd tier’ partner

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

Britain is not alone in falling back. The Trump administration’s persistence that Europe pay for its own defence has cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire scenario after decades of sluggish development and reduced costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research assessed at the end of last year that Euro area economic performance has actually been ‘controlled’ considering that around 2018, showing ‘complex difficulties of energy dependence, producing vulnerabilities, and shifting worldwide trade characteristics’.

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

This remains fragile, nevertheless, with residents significantly agitated by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of budget-friendly lodging and trapped in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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