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

Britain is on course to ending up being a ‘second tier’ European country like Spain or Italy due to economic decline and a weak armed force that weakens its effectiveness to allies, a professional has actually alerted.

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 misguided policies that might see it lose its standing as a top-tier middle power at present .

The stark assessment weighed that successive government failures in policy and bring in investment had actually caused Britain to miss out on out on the ‘industries 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 examines that Britain is now on track to fall behind Poland in terms of per capita earnings by 2030, which the main European nation’s military will soon exceed the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and equipment on the current trajectory.

‘The concern is that once we are devalued to a second tier middle power, it’s going to be almost difficult to get back. 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 strong leaders who are able to make the tough choices right now.’

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 utilizes a radio to talk to Archer crews from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery during a live fire variety on Rovajärvi Training Area, during Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

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

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‘Not only is the U.K. forecasted 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 concern at a time of heightened geopolitical stress, with Britain pegged to be among the leading forces in Europe’s rapid rearmament task.

‘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 invest in our military and basically 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 stand on its own and the U.K. would have remained in a premium position to actually lead European defence. But none of the European nations are.’

Slowed defence spending and patterns of low performance are absolutely nothing new. But Britain is now likewise ‘failing 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 as soon as ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is reacting by hurting the last vestiges of its military might and financial power.

The U.K., he stated, ‘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 an arrangement was announced by the Labour government last October.

Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security think thank warned at the time that ‘the move demonstrates worrying strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government refers to as being characterised by fantastic power competition’.

Calls for the U.K. to supply reparations for its historic function in the slave trade were revived also in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the program.

A Challenger 2 main battle 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 throughout an interview 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 risk.

‘We understand soldiers and rockets but fail to fully conceive of the danger that having no option to China’s supply chains may have on our capability to react to military hostility.’

He recommended a brand-new security design to ‘enhance the U.K.’s strategic dynamism’ based on a rethink of migratory policy and risk assessment, access to uncommon earth minerals in a market controlled by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and self-reliance by means of financial investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on atomic energy.

‘Without immediate policy changes to reignite growth, Britain will become a reduced power, reliant on more powerful allies and susceptible to foreign coercion,’ the Diplomacy columnist stated.

‘As worldwide financial competition magnifies, the U.K. must choose whether to accept a vibrant growth program or resign itself to irreversible decline.’

Britain’s dedication to the idea of Net Zero might be admirable, but the pursuit will hinder growth and odd strategic objectives, he cautioned.

‘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 failed to purchase our financial, in our energy infrastructure. And we have substantial resources at our disposal.’

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

‘But we’ve 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 including Labour political leaders had firmly insisted was essential to discovering the cash for costly plant-building tasks.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation company, has actually been heralded for its grants for little energy-producing companies in your home, business owners have cautioned a larger culture of ‘risk hostility’ in the U.K. stifles investment.

In 2022, incomes 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 actually consistently stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian threat’, permitting the trend of managed decrease.

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

‘The threat to this order … has actually established partially due to the fact that of the lack of a robust will to protect it, owing in part to ponder foreign efforts to subvert the recognition of the true 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 method towards waking Britain as much as the urgency of investing in defence.

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is inadequate. He prompted a top-down reform of ‘essentially our entire state’ to bring the ossified state back to life and sustain it.

‘Reforming the welfare state, reforming the NHS, reforming pensions – these are basically bodies that take up tremendous amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing significantly,’ he told MailOnline.

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

The report describes recommendations in extreme tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a restored concentrate on securing Britain’s function as a leader in state-of-the-art markets, energy security, and global trade.

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

File image. Britain’s economic stagnancy might see it soon end up being a ‘second tier’ partner

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

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

The Centre for Economic Policy Research evaluated at the end of in 2015 that Euro location economic performance has actually been ‘controlled’ since around 2018, highlighting ‘diverse obstacles of energy dependency, producing vulnerabilities, and shifting global trade characteristics’.

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

This remains fragile, however, with citizens progressively upset by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of affordable lodging and caught in low paying seasonal jobs.

The Henry Jackson Society is a diplomacy and nationwide security believe thank based in the United Kingdom.

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