Poland Set to ‘Quickly Overtake Britain in Military Strength And Income’

Britain is on course to becoming a ‘second tier’ European country like Spain or Italy due to financial decrease and a weak military that weakens its effectiveness to allies, a specialist has actually warned.

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

The plain assessment weighed that succeeding federal government failures in guideline and bring in financial investment had triggered Britain to lose out on the ‘industries of the future’ courted by developed economies.

‘Britain no longer has the industrial 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 most current report, Strategic Prosperity: The Case for Economic Growth as a National Security Priority.

The report evaluates 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 soon exceed the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and equipment on the existing trajectory.

‘The concern is that once we are downgraded to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be almost impossible to get back. Nations do not return from this,’ Dr Ibrahim told MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be accelerated decrease unless we nip this in the bud and have vibrant 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 reloads 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 throughout a live fire variety on Rovajärvi Training Area, throughout Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim welcomed the federal government’s choice to increase defence costs to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, but warned much deeper, systemic concerns threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a globally prominent power.

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

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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 not able to sustain release at scale.’

This is of specific issue at a time of increased geopolitical stress, with Britain pegged to be amongst the leading forces in Europe’s rapid 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 massive oversight on the part of subsequent federal governments, not just Starmer’s problem, of stopping working to invest in our military and essentially contracting out security to the United States and NATO,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting tiredness of offering the security umbrella to Europe, Europe now has to stand 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 productivity are absolutely nothing new. But Britain is now likewise ‘stopping working to change’ to the Trump administration’s shock to the rules-based international order, said Dr Ibrahim.

The previous consultant to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review noted in the report that in spite of the ‘weakening’ of the organizations when ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is reacting by damaging the last vestiges of its military may and financial power.

The U.K., he said, ‘appears to be making increasingly costly 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 analysis.

Negotiations in between the U.K. and Mauritius were begun by the Tories in 2022, however an agreement was announced by the Labour government last October.

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

Calls for the U.K. to provide reparations for its historic role in the servant trade were rekindled also in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a conference of Commonwealth nations that reparations would not be on the agenda.

An Opposition 2 main fight 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 evaluated 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 but stop working to totally develop of the threat that having no option to China’s supply chains might have on our ability to react to military hostility.’

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

‘Without instant policy modifications to reignite growth, Britain will become a lessened power, reliant on stronger allies and susceptible to foreign coercion,’ the Foreign Policy writer stated.

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

Britain’s dedication to the concept of Net Zero might be laudable, however the pursuit will prevent development and odd tactical goals, he warned.

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

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

Nuclear power, including making use of little modular reactors, could be a benefit for the British economy and energy independence.

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

Britain did introduce a new financing design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour political leaders had insisted was essential to finding the cash for costly plant-building jobs.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation agency, has been heralded for its grants for small energy-producing business at home, entrepreneurs have actually cautioned a broader culture of ‘threat hostility’ 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 photo of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

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

But the revival of autocracies on the world stage threats further weakening the rules-based worldwide order from which Britain ‘advantages tremendously’ as a globalised economy.

‘The danger to this order … has actually established partly since of the lack of a robust will to defend it, owing in part to ponder foreign efforts to subvert the acknowledgment of the true hiding hazard they present.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim cautioned 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 well-being state, reforming the NHS, reforming pensions – these are basically bodies that take up tremendous quantities of funds and they’ll just keep growing significantly,’ he told MailOnline.

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

The report describes suggestions in radical tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a renewed concentrate on securing Britain’s role as a leader in state-of-the-art industries, energy security, and global trade.

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

File photo. Britain’s economic stagnation could see it soon 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 pay for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire situation after years of slow growth and lowered spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of last year that Euro area economic performance has actually been ‘controlled’ because around 2018, highlighting ‘complex obstacles of energy reliance, making vulnerabilities, and moving worldwide trade dynamics’.

There remain profound inconsistencies between European economies; German deindustrialisation has hit services difficult and forced redundancies, while Spain has grown in line with its tourism-focused economy.

This remains vulnerable, however, with locals increasingly agitated by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of inexpensive accommodation and trapped in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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