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

Britain is on course to becoming a ‘second tier’ European nation like Spain or Italy due to economic decrease and a weak armed force that undermines its effectiveness to allies, a specialist has cautioned.

Research professor 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 existing development rates.

The plain assessment weighed that succeeding federal government failures in policy and attracting investment had triggered Britain to lose out on the ‘markets 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 2 months,’ he composed in The Henry Jackson Society’s latest report, Strategic Prosperity: The Case for Economic Growth as a National Security Priority.

The report examines that Britain is now on track to fall behind Poland in terms of per capita earnings by 2030, and that the main European country’s military will quickly surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and equipment on the present trajectory.

‘The issue is that once we are devalued to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be almost difficult to get back. Nations do not return from this,’ Dr Ibrahim told 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 hard choices 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 crews from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery throughout a live fire range on Rovajärvi Training Area, during Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim welcomed the federal government’s decision to increase defence costs to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, but cautioned much deeper, systemic concerns threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a globally prominent power.

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

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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 not able to sustain implementation at scale.’

This is of particular issue at a time of heightened geopolitical tension, with Britain pegged to be among 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 federal governments, not just Starmer’s problem, of failing to buy 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 has to base on its own and the U.K. would have been in a premium position to really 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 likewise ‘failing to adjust’ to the Trump administration’s shock to the rules-based worldwide 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 ‘protected’ by the U.S., Britain is reacting by hurting the last vestiges of its military may and financial power.

The U.K., he stated, ‘appears to be making progressively costly 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, but an agreement was revealed 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 worrying tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government explains as being characterised by great power competitors’.

Calls for the U.K. to offer reparations for its historic role in the servant trade were revived also in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer said ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth nations that reparations would not be on the agenda.

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 Tusk speak during a press conference in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

Dr Ibhramin examined 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 stop working to totally conceive of the risk that having no alternative to China’s supply chains may have on our ability to react to military hostility.’

He recommended a brand-new security design to ‘improve the U.K.‘s strategic dynamism’ based on a rethink of migratory policy and hazard assessment, access to rare earth minerals in a market controlled by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and self-reliance through investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on nuclear energy.

‘Without immediate policy modifications to reignite development, Britain will become a lessened power, reliant on stronger allies and susceptible to foreign coercion,’ the Foreign Policy writer stated.

‘As global economic competitors heightens, the U.K. must choose whether to welcome a vibrant development agenda or resign itself to irreversible decline.’

Britain’s commitment to the idea of Net Zero may be admirable, but the pursuit will hinder development and unknown 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 country that has actually stopped working to invest in our economic, in our energy infrastructure. And we have considerable resources at our disposal.’

Nuclear power, including making use of small modular reactors, could be a boon 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 substantial amount of time.’

Britain did present a new financing design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour politicians had actually insisted was crucial to discovering the cash for costly plant-building jobs.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation firm, has been heralded for its grants for little energy-producing companies in the house, business owners have actually alerted 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 image of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has consistently failed to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian hazard’, permitting the pattern of managed decrease.

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

‘The hazard to this order … has established partly due to the fact that of the absence of a robust will to safeguard it, owing in part to ponder foreign efforts to overturn the recognition of the true hiding threat they present.’

The Trump administration’s cautioning 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 buying defence.

But Dr Ibrahim cautioned that this is not enough. He prompted a top-down reform of ‘basically 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 tremendous amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing considerably,’ he told MailOnline.

‘You might double the NHS spending plan and it will truly not make much of a dent. So all of this will require fundamental reform and will take a great deal of nerve from whomever is in power due to the fact that it will make them out of favor.’

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

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

File photo. Britain’s financial stagnancy could see it quickly end up being a ‘2nd tier’ partner

Boarded-up stores 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 insistence that Europe pay for its own defence has cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s alarming circumstance after years of sluggish growth and lowered costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research evaluated at the end of last year that Euro location financial performance has been ‘controlled’ since around 2018, illustrating ‘multifaceted challenges of energy reliance, producing vulnerabilities, and moving international trade dynamics’.

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

This stays vulnerable, however, with citizens significantly upset by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of budget friendly accommodation and caught in low paying seasonal tasks.

The Henry Jackson Society is a diplomacy and nationwide security believe thank based in the United Kingdom.

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