Poland Set to ‘Soon 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, a professional has warned.

Research teacher Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning brand-new report that the U.K. has 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 growth rates.

The plain evaluation weighed that succeeding federal government failures in policy and drawing in financial 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 two 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 examines that Britain is now on track to fall back Poland in regards to per capita earnings by 2030, which the main European nation’s military will soon go beyond the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and devices on the present trajectory.

‘The concern is that as soon as we are devalued to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be virtually difficult to return. Nations don’t return from this,’ Dr Ibrahim informed MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be accelerated decrease unless we nip this in the bud and have strong leaders who are able to make the challenging choices today.’

People pass boarded up shops 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 talk to Archer teams from 19th Regiment throughout a live fire range on Rovajärvi Training Area, throughout Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim invited the government’s decision to increase defence costs to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, however cautioned 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 effectiveness to its allies is now ‘falling back even second-tier European powers’, he warned.

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‘Not just is the U.K. forecasted to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, but 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 stress, with Britain pegged to be among the leading forces in Europe’s quick rearmament job.

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

‘This is a huge oversight on the part of subsequent governments, not just Starmer’s issue, of failing to invest in our military and essentially outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,’ he told MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting tiredness of supplying the security umbrella to Europe, Europe now has to base on its own and the U.K. would have been in a premium position to in fact lead European defence. But none of the European countries are.’

Slowed defence spending and patterns of low efficiency are nothing new. But Britain is now also ‘stopping working to adjust’ 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 kept in mind in the report that in spite of the ‘weakening’ of the institutions when ‘protected’ by the U.S., Britain is reacting by damaging the last vestiges of its military might and financial power.

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

Negotiations in between the U.K. and Mauritius were begun 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 believe thank alerted at the time that ‘the relocation shows stressing strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government describes as being characterised by excellent power competitors’.

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

An Opposition 2 primary fight tank of the British forces throughout the NATO’s Spring Storm exercise 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 versus its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of danger.

‘We understand soldiers and rockets however fail to totally envisage the threat that having no option to China’s supply chains may have on our ability to respond to military hostility.’

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

‘Without instant policy changes to reignite growth, Britain will become a diminished power, reliant on more powerful allies and vulnerable to foreign coercion,’ the Diplomacy writer stated.

‘As worldwide economic competition intensifies, the U.K. needs to choose whether to welcome a strong growth program or resign itself to irreparable decrease.’

Britain’s dedication to the concept of Net Zero might be admirable, however the pursuit will inhibit growth and odd strategic goals, he warned.

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

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

Nuclear power, consisting of using small modular reactors, could be a benefit for the British economy and energy independence.

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

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

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development company, has been declared for its grants for little energy-producing companies in your home, business owners have actually alerted a larger culture of ‘risk aversion’ in the U.K. suppresses 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 actually consistently failed to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian danger’, permitting the pattern of handled decline.

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

‘The threat to this order … has actually established partly due to the fact that of the lack of a robust will to safeguard it, owing in part to ponder foreign efforts to overturn the acknowledgment of the real prowling hazard they position.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim alerted that this is not enough. He advised 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 use up immense amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing considerably,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You could double the NHS budget plan and it will truly not make much of a damage. So all of this will require essential reform and will take a great deal of guts from whomever is in power because it will make them undesirable.’

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

Vladimir Putin talks with the governor of Arkhangelsk region Alexander Tsybulsky throughout their conference at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, March 11, 2025

File picture. Britain’s economic stagnation might see it soon end up being a ‘2nd tier’ partner

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

Britain is not alone in falling back. The Trump administration’s persistence that Europe spend for its own defence has cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire scenario after years of sluggish growth and lowered spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research assessed at the end of in 2015 that Euro location financial performance has actually been ‘controlled’ since around 2018, illustrating ‘multifaceted difficulties of energy dependence, producing vulnerabilities, and shifting worldwide trade dynamics’.

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

This remains fragile, nevertheless, with locals significantly upset by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of affordable lodging and caught in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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