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

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

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 misguided policies that might see it lose its standing as a top-tier middle power at existing development rates.

The stark evaluation weighed that succeeding government failures in regulation and bring in financial investment had actually triggered Britain to miss out on the ‘markets of the future’ courted by developed economies.

‘Britain no longer has the industrial 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 terms of per capita income by 2030, and that the central European country’s armed force will soon surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and devices on the present trajectory.

‘The concern is that when we are downgraded to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be practically difficult to return. 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 strong leaders who have the ability to make the challenging decisions right now.’

People pass boarded up stores on March 20, 2024 in Hastings, England

A British soldier refills his rifle on February 17, 2025 in Smardan, Romania

Staff Sergeant Rai utilizes a radio to speak with Archer teams from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery throughout 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 cautioned much deeper, systemic issues 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 back even second-tier European powers’, he alerted.

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

This is of specific issue 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 today, Russian and Ukrainian. Not a single European country to install a single heavy armoured brigade.’

‘This is an enormous oversight on the part of subsequent federal governments, not simply Starmer’s issue, of stopping working to purchase our military and basically contracting out security to the United States and NATO,’ he told MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting fatigue of supplying 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 costs and patterns of low performance are absolutely nothing brand-new. But Britain is now likewise ‘stopping working to adjust’ 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 noted in the report that in spite of the ‘weakening’ of the organizations once ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is reacting by hurting the last vestiges of its military might and economic power.

The U.K., he stated, ‘appears to be making 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 an agreement was announced by the Labour federal government last October.

Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security think thank cautioned at the time that ‘the relocation shows worrying tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government describes as being characterised by terrific power competitors’.

Calls for the U.K. to offer reparations for its historic role in the slave trade were revived also in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer said ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the agenda.

A Challenger 2 primary 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 Minister Donald Tusk speak during a press conference 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 danger.

‘We comprehend soldiers and rockets but fail to completely develop of the risk that having no option to China’s supply chains might have on our ability to react to military hostility.’

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

‘Without instant policy modifications to reignite growth, Britain will become a diminished power, reliant on stronger allies and susceptible to foreign coercion,’ the Diplomacy columnist stated.

‘As global economic competitors magnifies, the U.K. needs to decide whether to welcome a bold development program or resign itself to permanent decrease.’

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

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

‘We are a country that has stopped working to invest in 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 introduce a brand-new financing design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour political leaders had actually firmly insisted was crucial to discovering the cash for costly plant-building jobs.

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

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

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

‘The threat to this order … has actually developed partially since of the lack of a robust will to safeguard it, owing in part to deliberate foreign efforts to overturn the acknowledgment of the true prowling danger they present.’

The Trump administration’s alerting to NATO allies in Europe that they will need to do their own bidding has gone some way towards waking Britain approximately the urgency of investing in defence.

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is insufficient. He prompted 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 use up enormous quantities of funds and they’ll just keep growing substantially,’ 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 courage from whomever is in power because it will make them unpopular.’

The report details suggestions in radical tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a restored focus on securing Britain’s function as a leader in modern markets, energy security, and international trade.

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

File picture. Britain’s financial 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 good in 2024

Britain is not alone in falling behind. The Trump administration’s persistence that Europe spend for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s alarming circumstance after decades of slow development and decreased costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research evaluated at the end of in 2015 that Euro area financial performance has actually been ‘controlled’ because around 2018, showing ‘diverse challenges of energy reliance, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and shifting global trade dynamics’.

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

This stays vulnerable, however, with locals increasingly upset by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of economical lodging and caught in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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