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 economic decrease and a weak military that weakens its effectiveness to allies, a specialist has cautioned.

Research teacher Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning brand-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 current growth rates.

The stark evaluation weighed that successive federal government failures in guideline and drawing in investment had triggered Britain to lose 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 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 terms of per capita earnings by 2030, and that the main European nation’s military will quickly exceed the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and devices on the existing trajectory.

‘The issue is that when we are devalued to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be virtually impossible to return. Nations do not return from this,’ Dr Ibrahim informed 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 difficult 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 speak to Archer crews from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery during a live fire variety on Rovajärvi Training Area, throughout Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

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

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

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

This is of particular issue 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 right now, 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 governments, not simply Starmer’s problem, of stopping working to buy our military and essentially contracting out security to the United States and NATO,’ he told MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting fatigue of providing 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 costs and patterns of low performance are nothing new. But Britain is now also ‘stopping working to change’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based worldwide order, said 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 institutions when ‘protected’ by the U.S., Britain is reacting by harming the last vestiges of its military might and economic power.

The U.K., he stated, ‘appears to be making progressively expensive 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 scrutiny.

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

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

Calls for the U.K. to supply 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 battle tank of the British forces throughout 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 understand soldiers and rockets however fail to totally envisage the danger that having no option to China’s supply chains might have on our capability to react to military aggressiveness.’

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

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

‘As international economic competition heightens, the U.K. needs to decide whether to welcome a bold development agenda or resign itself to irreparable decline.’

Britain’s commitment to the concept of Net Zero might be admirable, but the pursuit will inhibit development and unknown strategic objectives, he cautioned.

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

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

Nuclear power, including the usage of little modular reactors, could be a boon for the British economy and energy self-reliance.

‘But we have actually stopped working to commercialise them and clearly that’s going to take a considerable amount of time.’

Britain did introduce a brand-new financing design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour politicians had actually firmly insisted was essential to finding the cash for pricey plant-building tasks.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation agency, has been heralded for its grants for little energy-producing business in your home, business owners have alerted a broader culture of ‘danger aversion’ in the U.K. stifles 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 picture of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

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

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

‘The hazard to this order … has developed partly since of the lack of a robust will to defend it, owing in part to ponder foreign attempts to overturn the acknowledgment of the true prowling threat they position.’

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 up to the seriousness of investing in defence.

But Dr Ibrahim cautioned that this is not enough. He urged a top-down reform of ‘essentially our whole 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 take up immense amounts 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 need basic reform and will take a lot of guts from whomever is in power because it will make them undesirable.’

The report details recommendations in extreme tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a renewed focus on protecting Britain’s function as a leader in high-tech markets, energy security, and worldwide trade.

Vladimir Putin talks with the guv of Arkhangelsk area Alexander Tsybulsky during their conference at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, March 11, 2025

File image. Britain’s financial stagnancy could see it quickly become a ‘2nd tier’ partner

Boarded-up stores in Blackpool as more than 13,000 stores closed their doors for great in 2024

Britain is not alone in falling back. The Trump administration’s insistence that Europe pay for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire situation after years of slow development and reduced costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research evaluated at the end of in 2015 that Euro area economic performance has actually been ‘subdued’ since around 2018, illustrating ‘multifaceted challenges of energy dependency, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and shifting global trade dynamics’.

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

This stays delicate, nevertheless, with citizens increasingly agitated by the to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of cost effective lodging and trapped in low paying seasonal tasks.

The Henry Jackson Society is a foreign policy and nationwide security think thank based in the UK.

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