Poland Set to ‘Quickly 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 financial decline and a weak military that weakens its effectiveness to allies, a professional has actually cautioned.

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

The stark evaluation weighed that successive government failures in regulation and drawing in investment had caused Britain to miss out on 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 newest 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, and that the central European country’s military will quickly surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and devices on the existing trajectory.

‘The problem is that as soon as we are reduced to a second tier middle power, it’s going to be practically difficult to return. Nations don’t come back from this,’ Dr MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be sped up decrease unless we nip this in the bud and have bold leaders who have the ability to make the difficult 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 uses a radio to talk to Archer crews from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery during a live fire variety on Rovajärvi Training Area, during Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

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

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

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‘Not only 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 not able to sustain implementation at scale.’

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

‘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 simply Starmer’s problem, of failing to purchase our military and essentially contracting out security to the United States and NATO,’ he told MailOnline.

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

Slowed defence spending and patterns of low performance are absolutely nothing new. But Britain is now likewise ‘failing 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 institutions once ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by harming 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 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 agreement was announced by the Labour government last October.

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

Require the U.K. to offer reparations for its historic function in the slave 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 program.

An Opposition 2 main battle 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 an interview 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 danger.

‘We understand soldiers and missiles but fail to fully conceive of the threat that having no option to China’s supply chains may have on our ability to respond to military hostility.’

He recommended a brand-new security model to ‘enhance the U.K.’s tactical dynamism’ based upon 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 atomic energy.

‘Without instant policy changes to reignite development, Britain will end up being a reduced power, reliant on stronger allies and vulnerable to foreign coercion,’ the Diplomacy columnist said.

‘As global financial competitors heightens, the U.K. must decide whether to embrace a bold growth program or resign itself to irreversible decline.’

Britain’s commitment to the concept of Net Zero may be admirable, but the pursuit will prevent growth and odd tactical goals, he warned.

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

‘We are a country that has actually stopped working to buy our financial, in our energy infrastructure. And we have considerable resources at our disposal.’

Nuclear power, consisting of making use of little modular reactors, could be a benefit for the British economy and energy independence.

‘But we’ve failed to commercialise them and undoubtedly that’s going to take a significant amount of time.’

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

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation agency, has actually been heralded for its grants for little energy-producing companies in your home, entrepreneurs have actually warned a broader culture of ‘threat hostility’ in the U.K. suppresses investment.

In 2022, incomes 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 actually regularly stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian danger’, enabling the pattern of handled decline.

But the resurgence of autocracies on the world stage dangers even more weakening the rules-based international order from which Britain ‘benefits enormously’ as a globalised economy.

‘The risk to this order … has actually established partially since of the absence of a robust will to protect it, owing in part to ponder foreign efforts to subvert the recognition of the real hiding danger they present.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim alerted that this is not enough. 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 basically bodies that take up immense amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing considerably,’ he told MailOnline.

‘You could double the NHS budget and it will truly not make much of a dent. 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 unpopular.’

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

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

File image. Britain’s economic stagnancy might see it soon end up being 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 behind. The Trump administration’s persistence that Europe pay for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire scenario after years of slow growth and reduced spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of last year that Euro location economic efficiency has actually been ‘controlled’ because around 2018, illustrating ‘multifaceted challenges of energy dependency, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and moving global trade characteristics’.

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

This stays delicate, nevertheless, with residents significantly upset by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of affordable lodging and trapped in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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