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 decline and a weak armed force that undermines its usefulness to allies, an expert has alerted.

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 misdirected policies that could see it lose its standing as a top-tier middle power at current development rates.

The stark assessment weighed that succeeding federal government failures in policy and attracting investment had actually caused 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 composed 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 behind Poland in regards to per capita income by 2030, and that the main European country’s military will quickly exceed the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and devices on the existing 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 sped up decline unless we nip this in the bud and have strong leaders who have the ability to make the tough choices right now.’

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

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

Staff Sergeant Rai uses a radio to speak with Archer teams from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery during a live fire variety on Rovajärvi Training Area, throughout Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim invited the federal government’s decision to increase defence costs to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, but cautioned much deeper, systemic problems threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as an internationally influential power.

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

Why WW3 is currently here … and how the UK will require to lead in America’s absence

‘Not only is the U.K. predicted to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, however also a smaller army and one that is not able to sustain release at scale.’

This is of particular issue at a time of increased geopolitical stress, with Britain pegged to be among the leading forces in Europe’s quick rearmament project.

‘There are 230 brigades in Ukraine today, Russian and Ukrainian. Not a single European nation to install a single heavy armoured brigade.’

‘This is a huge oversight on the part of subsequent federal governments, not simply Starmer’s issue, of stopping working to purchase our military and essentially outsourcing 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 really lead European defence. But none of the European countries are.’

Slowed defence costs and patterns of low productivity are absolutely nothing brand-new. But Britain is now likewise ‘stopping working to adjust’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based international order, stated 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 as soon as ‘protected’ by the U.S., Britain is reacting by harming the last vestiges of its military might and financial power.

The U.K., he said, ‘appears to be making increasingly 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 been the source of much examination.

Negotiations between the U.K. and Mauritius were begun by the Tories in 2022, but an arrangement was revealed by the Labour federal government last October.

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

Calls for the U.K. to offer reparations for its historic function in the servant trade were rekindled likewise in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer said ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth countries 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 during an interview in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

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

‘We comprehend soldiers and missiles however fail to totally conceive of the risk that having no option to China’s supply chains might have on our capability to react to military hostility.’

He recommended a brand-new security design to ‘boost the U.K.’s strategic dynamism’ based upon a rethink of migratory policy and threat assessment, access to rare 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 immediate policy changes to reignite development, Britain will become a lessened power, reliant on stronger allies and vulnerable to foreign browbeating,’ the Diplomacy writer said.

‘As global economic competitors magnifies, the U.K. needs to choose whether to embrace a vibrant development agenda or resign itself to permanent decrease.’

Britain’s commitment to the idea of Net Zero may be laudable, however the pursuit will inhibit development and odd tactical goals, he warned.

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

‘We are a nation that has failed to buy our economic, in our energy facilities. And we have considerable resources at our disposal.’

Nuclear power, including using little modular reactors, could be an advantage for the British economy and energy independence.

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

Britain did introduce a new funding model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour political leaders had firmly insisted was essential to finding the cash for expensive plant-building tasks.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation firm, has actually been declared for its grants for little energy-producing companies at home, business owners have actually alerted a broader culture of ‘risk hostility’ in the U.K. suppresses 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 photo of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

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

But the renewal of autocracies on the world phase threats further undermining the rules-based global order from which Britain ‘advantages tremendously’ as a globalised economy.

‘The hazard to this order … has actually developed partly because of the lack of a robust will to defend it, owing in part to ponder foreign efforts to subvert the recognition of the true prowling threat they posture.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim cautioned that this is inadequate. He advised a top-down reform of ‘basically 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 basically bodies that take up enormous quantities of funds and they’ll simply keep growing substantially,’ he told MailOnline.

‘You might double the NHS spending plan and it will really not make much of a dent. So all of this will need basic reform and will take a great deal of nerve from whomever is in power due to the fact that it will make them undesirable.’

The report describes suggestions in extreme tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a renewed concentrate on protecting Britain’s role as a leader in modern markets, energy security, and international trade.

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

File picture. Britain’s financial stagnation 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 spend for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire situation after years of slow growth and minimized spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of in 2015 that Euro location financial performance has actually been ‘controlled’ because around 2018, illustrating ‘multifaceted challenges of energy reliance, making vulnerabilities, and shifting international trade characteristics’.

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

This remains fragile, nevertheless, with citizens increasingly agitated by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of affordable lodging and trapped in low paying seasonal jobs.

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

SpainPoland