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

Britain is on course to becoming a ‘second tier’ European nation like Spain or Italy due to financial decrease and a weak military that undermines its effectiveness to allies, a professional has warned.

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

The stark evaluation weighed that succeeding government failures in policy and attracting investment had 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 2 months,’ he wrote 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 terms of per capita income by 2030, which the central European nation’s military will soon surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and devices on the existing trajectory.

‘The concern is that once we are reduced 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 decline unless we nip this in the bud and have bold leaders who have the ability to make the tough decisions 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 to Archer crews from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery during a live fire range on Rovajärvi Training Area, during Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

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

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

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

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

‘There are 230 brigades in Ukraine right now, 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 stopping working to invest in our military and essentially outsourcing 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 countries are.’

Slowed defence spending and patterns of low productivity are nothing brand-new. But Britain is now also ‘failing to change’ to the Trump administration’s shock 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 institutions as soon as ‘protected’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by damaging the last vestiges of its military might and economic power.

The U.K., he stated, ‘seems to be making increasingly expensive 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 actually been the source of much examination.

Negotiations in between the U.K. and Mauritius were started by the Tories in 2022, but a contract was announced by the Labour government last October.

Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security believe thank alerted at the time that ‘the relocation demonstrates worrying tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government explains as being characterised by fantastic power competition’.

Require the U.K. to offer reparations for its historic function in the servant trade were rekindled also in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a conference of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the agenda.

A Challenger 2 main battle 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 examined that the U.K. appears to be acting versus its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of risk.

‘We understand and rockets but stop working to totally conceive of the risk that having no option to China’s supply chains might have on our ability to react to military aggressiveness.’

He recommended a new security model to ‘improve the U.K.’s tactical dynamism’ based upon a rethink of migratory policy and risk assessment, access to unusual 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 nuclear energy.

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

‘As international financial competition heightens, the U.K. should decide whether to welcome a strong development program or resign itself to irreversible decline.’

Britain’s commitment to the idea of Net Zero might be laudable, however the pursuit will inhibit development and obscure tactical goals, he alerted.

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

‘We are a nation that has actually failed to buy our financial, in our energy facilities. And we have significant resources at our disposal.’

Nuclear power, consisting of the use of little modular reactors, could be an advantage for the British economy and energy independence.

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

Britain did introduce a brand-new funding design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour politicians had firmly insisted was crucial to finding the cash for pricey plant-building projects.

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 wider culture of ‘threat hostility’ in the U.K. stifles investment.

In 2022, earnings for the poorest 14 million people fell by 7.5%, per the ONS. Pictured: Waterlooville High Street, Waterlooville, Hants

Undated file photo of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has regularly failed to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian danger’, enabling the pattern of handled decline.

But the revival of autocracies on the world phase threats even more weakening the rules-based worldwide order from which Britain ‘advantages tremendously’ as a globalised economy.

‘The hazard to this order … has actually established partially since of the lack of a robust will to protect it, owing in part to ponder foreign efforts to subvert the acknowledgment of the real hiding hazard they position.’

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 as much as the seriousness of investing in defence.

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is insufficient. He urged a top-down reform of ‘basically our whole state’ to bring the ossified state back to life and sustain it.

‘Reforming the welfare state, reforming the NHS, reforming pensions – these are essentially bodies that take up immense quantities of funds and they’ll just 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 great deal of courage from whomever is in power due to the fact that it will make them out of favor.’

The report outlines suggestions in extreme tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a restored concentrate on securing Britain’s role as a leader in high-tech markets, energy security, and global trade.

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

File photo. Britain’s economic stagnancy might see it quickly end up being 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 behind. The Trump administration’s persistence that Europe pay for its own defence has cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire situation after decades of sluggish development and decreased spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of in 2015 that Euro area economic performance has been ‘suppressed’ considering that around 2018, highlighting ‘complex challenges of energy dependency, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and moving international trade characteristics’.

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

This remains vulnerable, however, with homeowners increasingly upset by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of cost effective lodging and trapped in low paying seasonal jobs.

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

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