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

Britain is on course to becoming a ‘2nd tier’ European country like Spain or Italy due to financial decline and a weak armed force that undermines its effectiveness to allies, a specialist has warned.

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

The stark evaluation weighed that successive federal government failures in regulation and drawing in investment had actually triggered Britain to miss out on out on the ‘markets 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 composed in The Henry Jackson Society’s latest 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 income by 2030, which the main European country’s armed force will quickly surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and equipment on the present trajectory.

‘The issue is that when we are devalued to a second tier middle power, it’s going to be practically difficult to get back. Nations do not return from this,’ Dr Ibrahim informed MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be sped up decline unless we nip this in the bud and have vibrant leaders who are able to make the difficult choices today.’

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 teams from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery throughout a live fire range on Rovajärvi Training Area, throughout Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim invited the government’s choice to increase defence costs to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, however alerted much deeper, systemic concerns 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 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, however also a smaller army and one that is unable to sustain deployment at scale.’

This is of specific issue at a time of heightened geopolitical stress, with Britain pegged to be amongst 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 massive oversight on the part of subsequent governments, not just Starmer’s problem, of failing to purchase our military and basically outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,’ he told 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 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 nothing brand-new. But Britain is now likewise ‘failing to adjust’ to the Trump administration’s shock 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 as soon as ‘protected’ by the U.S., Britain is reacting by hurting the last vestiges of its military might and financial power.

The U.K., he said, ‘seems 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 been the source of much scrutiny.

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

Dr of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security think thank alerted at the time that ‘the relocation shows stressing strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government explains as being characterised by terrific power competition’.

Require the U.K. to supply reparations for its historical role in the servant trade were rekindled likewise in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a conference of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the program.

An Opposition 2 primary 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 examined that the U.K. appears to be acting against its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of risk.

‘We understand soldiers and rockets however stop working to fully envisage the threat that having no option to China’s supply chains might have on our ability to respond to military aggression.’

He suggested a new security design to ‘improve the U.K.’s tactical dynamism’ based upon a rethink of migratory policy and danger assessment, access to uncommon earth minerals in a market controlled by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and independence 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 lessened power, reliant on stronger allies and susceptible to foreign coercion,’ the Diplomacy columnist said.

‘As worldwide financial competition heightens, the U.K. needs to decide whether to welcome a bold growth agenda or resign itself to irreversible decrease.’

Britain’s dedication to the concept of Net Zero may be laudable, but the pursuit will hinder growth and obscure tactical objectives, he warned.

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

‘We are a country that has stopped working to buy our financial, in our energy infrastructure. And we have significant resources at our disposal.’

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

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

Britain did present a brand-new financing model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour politicians had insisted was crucial to discovering the cash for expensive plant-building tasks.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development agency, has been declared for its grants for little energy-producing business in your home, business owners have actually alerted a larger culture of ‘threat hostility’ in the U.K. suppresses investment.

In 2022, earnings for the poorest 14 million individuals 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 consistently failed to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian threat’, allowing the pattern of managed decrease.

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

‘The threat to this order … has actually established partially since of the absence of a robust will to defend it, owing in part to ponder foreign efforts to overturn the recognition of the true hiding threat they pose.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim warned 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 welfare state, reforming the NHS, reforming pensions – these are essentially bodies that take up enormous amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing substantially,’ he told MailOnline.

‘You might double the NHS budget and it will actually not make much of a dent. So all of this will need fundamental reform and will take a lot of guts from whomever is in power because it will make them out of favor.’

The report lays out suggestions in radical tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a renewed focus on securing Britain’s role as a leader in high-tech markets, energy security, and international trade.

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

File photo. Britain’s financial stagnation might see it quickly become a ‘2nd tier’ partner

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

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

The Centre for Economic Policy Research evaluated at the end of in 2015 that Euro location financial performance has actually been ‘subdued’ since around 2018, highlighting ‘complex obstacles of energy dependency, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and moving global trade characteristics’.

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

This remains fragile, however, with residents significantly agitated by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of budget friendly accommodation and trapped in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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