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 economic decrease and a weak armed force that undermines its usefulness to allies, a professional has cautioned.

Research teacher Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning 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 existing growth rates.

The stark assessment weighed that successive federal government failures in regulation and bring in financial investment had actually caused 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 2 months,’ he composed in The Henry Jackson Society’s most current 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, and that the main European nation’s armed force will soon surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and devices on the current trajectory.

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

‘This is going to be sped up decline unless we nip this in the bud and have bold leaders who are able to make the difficult decisions 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 utilizes a radio to talk to Archer teams from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery during a live fire variety on Rovajärvi Training Area, during Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim welcomed the federal government’s decision to increase defence costs to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, however cautioned much deeper, systemic concerns threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as an internationally prominent 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 just is the U.K. anticipated to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, but also a smaller army and one that is not able to sustain deployment at scale.’

This is of specific concern at a time of increased geopolitical stress, with Britain pegged to be amongst the leading forces in Europe’s fast rearmament job.

‘There are 230 brigades in Ukraine right now, 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 federal governments, not simply 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 fatigue of offering 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 efficiency are absolutely nothing new. But Britain is now also ‘stopping working to adjust’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based worldwide order, stated Dr Ibrahim.

The previous consultant to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review kept in mind in the report that in spite of the ‘weakening’ of the organizations 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 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 started by the Tories in 2022, but an arrangement was revealed by the Labour federal government last October.

Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security believe thank cautioned at the time that ‘the relocation demonstrates fretting tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. to as being characterised by excellent power competition’.

Calls for the U.K. to offer reparations for its historical function in the servant trade were revived also in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer stated 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 workout in Kilingi-Nomme, Estonia, Wednesday, May 15, 2024

Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk speak throughout a press conference in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

Dr Ibhramin examined that the U.K. seems to be acting versus its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of threat.

‘We understand soldiers and missiles but fail to completely conceive of the risk that having no alternative to China’s supply chains may have on our ability to respond to military hostility.’

He suggested a new security design to ‘improve the U.K.’s strategic dynamism’ based on a rethink of migratory policy and danger evaluation, access to unusual earth minerals in a market controlled by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and self-reliance through financial investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on atomic energy.

‘Without immediate policy modifications to reignite development, Britain will end up being a reduced power, reliant on more powerful allies and susceptible to foreign coercion,’ the Diplomacy columnist said.

‘As international economic competition magnifies, the U.K. needs to choose whether to embrace a strong development program or resign itself to permanent decrease.’

Britain’s dedication to the idea of Net Zero may be laudable, however the pursuit will inhibit growth and obscure strategic objectives, he cautioned.

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

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

Nuclear power, including making use of small modular reactors, might be an advantage for the British economy and energy self-reliance.

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

Britain did introduce a new funding design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour political leaders had insisted was crucial to discovering the money for costly plant-building jobs.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation company, has actually been heralded for its grants for little energy-producing business in your home, entrepreneurs have alerted a wider culture of ‘risk hostility’ in the U.K. suppresses financial 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 image of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has actually consistently failed to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian hazard’, allowing the pattern of managed decrease.

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

‘The threat to this order … has actually developed partially due to the fact that of the lack of a robust will to safeguard it, owing in part to ponder foreign attempts to overturn the acknowledgment of the true hiding danger they present.’

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 investing in defence.

But Dr Ibrahim alerted 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 well-being state, reforming the NHS, reforming pensions – these are basically bodies that take up enormous amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing significantly,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You could double the NHS spending plan and it will actually not make much of a dent. 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 out of favor.’

The report lays out suggestions in radical tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a restored focus on protecting Britain’s function as a leader in high-tech industries, energy security, and international trade.

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

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

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

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

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

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

This remains fragile, nevertheless, with citizens significantly upset by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of cost effective accommodation and caught in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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