Poland Set to ‘Quickly 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 alerted.

Research professor Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning brand-new report that the U.K. has actually been paralysed by low financial investment, high tax and misdirected policies that could see it lose its standing as a top-tier middle power at present growth rates.

The plain assessment weighed that succeeding government failures in guideline and attracting investment had actually caused Britain to lose out on the ‘markets of the future’ courted by established economies.

‘Britain no longer has the industrial 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 evaluates that Britain is now on track to fall back Poland in regards to per capita earnings by 2030, which the central European country’s armed force will soon surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and equipment on the current trajectory.

‘The problem is that once we are devalued to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be almost impossible to return. Nations don’t return from this,’ Dr Ibrahim informed MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be accelerated decline unless we nip this in the bud and have bold leaders who have the ability to make the hard choices today.’

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

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

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

Dr Ibrahim invited the government’s choice to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, but warned much deeper, systemic problems threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a worldwide influential power.

With a weakening commercial base, Britain’s usefulness to its allies is now ‘falling back 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. anticipated to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, however likewise a smaller 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 among the leading forces in Europe’s rapid rearmament project.

‘There are 230 brigades in Ukraine right now, Russian and Ukrainian. Not a single European country 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 purchase our military and basically outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting tiredness of providing the security umbrella to Europe, Europe now needs to stand on its own and the U.K. would have been in a premium position to really lead European defence. But none of the are.’

Slowed defence spending and patterns of low efficiency are nothing brand-new. But Britain is now likewise ‘failing to adjust’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based worldwide order, stated 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 responding by hurting the last vestiges of its military may and economic power.

The U.K., he said, ‘seems to be making significantly pricey 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 revealed by the Labour government last October.

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

Calls for the U.K. to supply reparations for its historic function in the slave trade were revived also 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 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 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 danger.

‘We comprehend soldiers and rockets but stop working to fully envisage the risk that having no alternative to China’s supply chains may have on our capability to react to military aggressiveness.’

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

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

‘As worldwide economic competitors intensifies, the U.K. should decide whether to welcome a bold growth program or resign itself to irreversible decline.’

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

‘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 actually stopped working to invest in our financial, in our energy infrastructure. And we have considerable resources at our disposal.’

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

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

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

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development agency, has actually been declared for its grants for small energy-producing companies in your home, entrepreneurs have warned a broader culture of ‘risk aversion’ in the U.K. stifles financial investment.

In 2022, incomes for the poorest 14 million individuals 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 regularly stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian danger’, enabling the pattern of handled decrease.

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

‘The risk to this order … has established partly since of the lack of a robust will to protect it, owing in part to ponder foreign attempts to subvert the acknowledgment of the real lurking risk they present.’

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 urgency of buying defence.

But Dr Ibrahim alerted that this is insufficient. He prompted 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 use up tremendous quantities of funds and they’ll just keep growing considerably,’ he told MailOnline.

‘You might double the NHS spending plan and it will actually not make much of a dent. So all of this will require fundamental reform and will take a lot of nerve from whomever is in power due to the fact that it will make them unpopular.’

The report lays out recommendations in extreme tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a renewed focus on securing Britain’s function as a leader in state-of-the-art markets, energy security, and global trade.

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

File picture. Britain’s economic stagnation might see it quickly become a ‘second 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 circumstance after decades of slow growth and lowered costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research assessed at the end of in 2015 that Euro area financial performance has actually been ‘subdued’ because around 2018, illustrating ‘multifaceted challenges of energy dependence, making vulnerabilities, and shifting worldwide trade characteristics’.

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

This remains delicate, however, with locals significantly agitated by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of budget-friendly lodging and caught in low paying seasonal jobs.

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

SpainPoland