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

Britain is on course to becoming a ‘2nd tier’ European nation like Spain or Italy due to financial decrease and a weak armed force that weakens its usefulness 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 development rates.

The plain evaluation weighed that succeeding government failures in guideline and attracting investment had triggered Britain to miss out on the ‘markets of the future’ courted by established 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 newest report, Strategic Prosperity: The Case for Economic Growth as a National Security Priority.

The report assesses that Britain is now on track to fall back Poland in terms of per capita income 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 existing trajectory.

‘The concern is that as soon as we are reduced to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be almost difficult to return. Nations do not return from this,’ Dr Ibrahim told MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be sped up decrease unless we nip this in the bud and have vibrant leaders who are able to make the hard 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 uses a radio to speak with Archer crews from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery throughout a live fire range on Rovajärvi Training Area, during Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

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

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

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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 release at scale.’

This is of particular issue at a time of heightened geopolitical stress, 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 nation to mount a single heavy armoured brigade.’

‘This is an enormous oversight on the part of subsequent governments, not just Starmer’s problem, of failing to invest in our military and basically contracting out security to the United States and NATO,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting fatigue of providing 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 countries are.’

Slowed defence costs and patterns of low productivity are nothing brand-new. But Britain is now also ‘stopping working to change’ to the Trump administration’s shock to the rules-based worldwide order, said Dr Ibrahim.

The former advisor to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review noted in the report that in spite of the ‘weakening’ of the institutions once ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by hurting the last vestiges of its military might and financial power.

The U.K., he said, ‘appears to be making progressively expensive 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 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 federal government last October.

Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security think thank alerted at the time that ‘the move shows stressing strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government refers to as being characterised by fantastic power competitors’.

Require the U.K. to provide reparations for its historical function in the slave trade were rekindled likewise in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer said ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the program.

An Opposition 2 main fight 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 assessed that the U.K. appears to be acting against its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of danger.

‘We comprehend soldiers and missiles however fail to completely develop of the danger that having no option to China’s supply chains might have on our ability to respond to military aggressiveness.’

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

‘Without instant policy modifications to reignite development, Britain will end up being a diminished power, reliant on stronger allies and susceptible to foreign coercion,’ the Diplomacy writer stated.

‘As international economic competitors magnifies, the U.K. should choose whether to embrace a vibrant growth 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 obscure strategic objectives, he warned.

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

‘We are a country that has failed to invest in our financial, in our energy infrastructure. And we have considerable resources at our disposal.’

Nuclear power, consisting of making use of little modular reactors, might be a boon for the British economy and energy .

‘But we’ve failed to commercialise them and clearly that’s going to take a considerable quantity of time.’

Britain did present a brand-new financing design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour politicians had actually firmly insisted was key to finding the cash for pricey plant-building projects.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development firm, has been declared for its grants for small energy-producing business in the house, business owners have cautioned a wider culture of ‘danger aversion’ 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 picture of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has actually regularly failed to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian hazard’, allowing the trend of managed decrease.

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

‘The threat to this order … has established partly since of the absence of a robust will to safeguard it, owing in part to ponder foreign attempts to overturn the acknowledgment of the real prowling risk they pose.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim alerted that this is inadequate. He advised a top-down reform of ‘essentially our entire state’ to bring the ossified state back to life and sustain it.

‘Reforming the well-being state, reforming the NHS, reforming pensions – these are essentially bodies that use up immense amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing considerably,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You might double the NHS spending plan and it will really not make much of a damage. So all of this will need essential reform and will take a lot of courage from whomever is in power due to the fact that it will make them unpopular.’

The report describes recommendations in radical 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 international trade.

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

File picture. Britain’s economic stagnation might see it soon 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 falling back. The Trump administration’s insistence that Europe spend for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire circumstance after decades of slow growth and decreased spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of in 2015 that Euro location economic efficiency has actually been ‘controlled’ because around 2018, illustrating ‘diverse challenges of energy dependency, making vulnerabilities, and shifting international trade dynamics’.

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

This remains fragile, however, with citizens increasingly 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 foreign policy and nationwide security think thank based in the United Kingdom.

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