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 financial decrease and a weak military that weakens its usefulness to allies, a professional has warned.

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

The plain assessment weighed that successive federal government failures in guideline and attracting financial investment had actually caused Britain to lose 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 composed in The Henry Jackson Society’s most current report, Strategic Prosperity: The Case for Economic Growth as a National Security Priority.

The report examines that Britain is now on track to fall back Poland in regards to per capita earnings by 2030, which the main European country’s armed force will quickly surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and devices on the current trajectory.

‘The concern is that as soon as we are downgraded to a second tier middle power, it’s going to be virtually difficult to get back. Nations don’t 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 have the ability to make the hard choices today.’

People pass boarded up shops 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 federal government’s choice to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, but warned 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 behind even second-tier European powers’, he alerted.

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‘Not just is the U.K. predicted 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 concern at a time of heightened geopolitical stress, 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 mount a single heavy armoured brigade.’

‘This is a huge oversight on the part of subsequent federal governments, not just Starmer’s issue, of failing to purchase our military and basically outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,’ he informed MailOnline.

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

Slowed defence costs and patterns of low efficiency are absolutely nothing brand-new. But Britain is now also ‘stopping working to adjust’ to the Trump administration’s shock to the rules-based global order, stated Dr Ibrahim.

The former consultant to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review kept in mind in the report that in spite of the ‘weakening’ of the organizations as soon as ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by hurting the last vestiges of its military may and economic 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 actually been the source of much scrutiny.

Negotiations in between the U.K. and Mauritius were started by the Tories in 2022, however a contract was announced 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 fretting strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government refers to as being characterised by great power competition’.

Require the U.K. to provide reparations for its historic role in the slave trade were rekindled 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 during 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 during a press conference in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

Dr Ibhramin assessed that the U.K. appears to be acting against its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of risk.

‘We comprehend soldiers and rockets but fail to fully envisage the threat that having no alternative to China’s supply chains may have on our capability to react to military aggression.’

He suggested a brand-new security design to ‘enhance the U.K.’s strategic dynamism’ based on a rethink of migratory policy and risk evaluation, access to rare earth minerals in a market dominated by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and independence by means of investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on nuclear energy.

‘Without immediate policy modifications to reignite growth, Britain will become a reduced power, reliant on stronger allies and vulnerable to foreign browbeating,’ the Diplomacy columnist stated.

‘As global economic competition intensifies, the U.K. needs to choose whether to embrace a strong growth agenda or resign itself to irreversible decline.’

Britain’s dedication to the concept of Net Zero might be laudable, but the pursuit will inhibit growth and unknown strategic goals, he cautioned.

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

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

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

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

Britain did present a new funding model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour political leaders had actually firmly insisted was crucial to finding the cash for pricey plant-building jobs.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development company, has been declared for its grants for small energy-producing business in the house, business owners have alerted a wider culture of ‘threat hostility’ in the U.K. stifles 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 photo of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has consistently stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian hazard’, enabling the trend of managed decline.

But the resurgence of autocracies on the world stage risks further undermining the rules-based worldwide order from which Britain ‘benefits tremendously’ as a globalised economy.

‘The risk to this order … has developed partially since of the lack of a robust will to safeguard it, owing in part to deliberate foreign attempts to subvert the acknowledgment of the true hiding risk they position.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is not enough. He advised 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 use up tremendous quantities of funds and they’ll just keep growing considerably,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You could 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 guts from whomever is in power since it will make them out of favor.’

The report describes suggestions in extreme tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a restored concentrate on protecting Britain’s function as a leader in state-of-the-art industries, energy security, and global trade.

Vladimir Putin speaks to the guv of Arkhangelsk area Alexander Tsybulsky throughout their meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, March 11, 2025

File picture. Britain’s economic stagnation might see it quickly become a ‘2nd tier’ partner

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

Britain is not alone in back. The Trump administration’s insistence that Europe spend for its own defence has cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire scenario after decades of sluggish growth and minimized costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research assessed at the end of last year that Euro area financial performance has actually been ‘controlled’ considering that around 2018, highlighting ‘complex obstacles of energy dependence, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and shifting international trade dynamics’.

There stay profound inconsistencies in between European economies; German deindustrialisation has actually struck services hard and forced redundancies, while Spain has actually grown in line with its tourism-focused economy.

This remains delicate, nevertheless, with homeowners progressively upset by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of economical lodging and caught 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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