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 economic decline 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 could see it lose its standing as a top-tier middle power at current growth rates.

The plain evaluation weighed that succeeding government failures in guideline and drawing in financial investment had 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 two months,’ he composed in The Henry Jackson Society’s latest report, Strategic Prosperity: The Case for Economic Growth as a National Security Priority.

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

‘The concern is that when we are reduced to a second tier middle power, it’s going to be almost impossible to return. Nations don’t come back from this,’ Dr Ibrahim told MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be accelerated decline unless we nip this in the bud and have strong leaders who are able to make the challenging choices 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 uses a radio to talk to Archer crews from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery throughout a live fire range on Rovajärvi Training Area, throughout Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim welcomed the federal government’s choice 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 worldwide influential power.

With a weakening industrial base, Britain’s usefulness to its allies is now ‘falling behind 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, however likewise a smaller sized army and one that is unable to sustain implementation at scale.’

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

‘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 problem, of stopping working to invest in our military and basically outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting fatigue of supplying 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 really lead European defence. But none of the European countries are.’

Slowed defence spending and patterns of low efficiency are absolutely nothing new. But Britain is now also ‘failing to adjust’ to the Trump administration’s shock to the rules-based worldwide order, said 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 when ‘protected’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by hurting the last vestiges of its military may and economic power.

The U.K., he said, ‘seems to be making significantly 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, however a contract was announced by the Labour federal 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 stressing strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government refers to as being characterised by excellent power competition’.

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

A Challenger 2 primary 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 throughout an interview in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

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

‘We understand soldiers and rockets however fail to fully conceive of the danger that having no alternative to China’s supply chains might have on our capability to respond to military aggression.’

He recommended a brand-new security design to ‘enhance the U.K.’s strategic 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 independence via financial investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on atomic energy.

‘Without immediate policy modifications to reignite development, Britain will end up being a reduced power, reliant on more powerful allies and vulnerable to foreign browbeating,’ the Diplomacy writer said.

‘As international financial competition heightens, the U.K. needs to decide whether to accept a vibrant development agenda or resign itself to permanent decline.’

Britain’s commitment to the concept of Net Zero might be admirable, but the pursuit will hinder growth and obscure strategic objectives, he warned.

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

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

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

‘But we have actually stopped working to commercialise them and obviously that’s going to take a substantial quantity of time.’

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

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation firm, has actually been heralded for its grants for little energy-producing business in your home, business owners have actually warned a wider culture of ‘risk hostility’ in the U.K. stifles financial investment.

In 2022, earnings 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 regularly failed to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian threat’, permitting the trend of managed decline.

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

‘The risk to this order … has actually established partially due to the fact that of the lack of a robust will to safeguard it, owing in part to deliberate foreign efforts to subvert the acknowledgment of the real hiding hazard they posture.’

The Trump administration’s warning to NATO allies in Europe that they will need 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 inadequate. He urged a top-down reform of ‘essentially 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 amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing considerably,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You might double the NHS budget 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 nerve from whomever is in power because it will make them undesirable.’

The report outlines recommendations in radical tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a restored focus on protecting Britain’s function as a leader in high-tech industries, energy security, and international trade.

Vladimir Putin speaks to the guv of Arkhangelsk area Alexander Tsybulsky during their conference 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 stores in Blackpool as more than 13,000 shops closed their doors for excellent in 2024

Britain is not alone in falling behind. 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 years of slow growth and reduced spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of last year that Euro area financial efficiency has been ‘controlled’ given that around 2018, showing ‘diverse challenges of energy dependency, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and shifting global trade dynamics’.

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

This remains fragile, nevertheless, with residents increasingly agitated by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of inexpensive lodging and caught in low paying seasonal jobs.

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

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