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

Britain is on course to becoming a ‘2nd tier’ European nation like Spain or Italy due to financial decrease and a weak armed force that undermines its usefulness to allies, an expert has actually cautioned.

Research professor Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning new report that the U.K. has actually been paralysed by low 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 evaluation weighed that failures in guideline and bring in investment had actually caused Britain to lose 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 wrote 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 behind Poland in terms of per capita earnings by 2030, which the main European country’s military will quickly exceed the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and devices on the current trajectory.

‘The problem is that as soon as we are downgraded to a second tier middle power, it’s going to be virtually impossible to get back. Nations don’t come back 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 are able to make the challenging choices today.’

People pass boarded up stores 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 speak to Archer teams from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery throughout a live fire variety on Rovajärvi Training Area, during Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim welcomed the federal government’s choice to increase defence costs to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, however cautioned much deeper, systemic issues threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a worldwide influential power.

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

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‘Not just is the U.K. predicted to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, but likewise a smaller army and one that is unable to sustain deployment at scale.’

This is of particular issue at a time of increased geopolitical tension, with Britain pegged to be amongst 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 mount a single heavy armoured brigade.’

‘This is a huge oversight on the part of subsequent federal governments, not just Starmer’s issue, of failing to buy 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 base 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 costs and patterns of low productivity are nothing brand-new. But Britain is now likewise ‘stopping working to change’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based international order, stated 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 institutions 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, ‘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 examination.

Negotiations in between the U.K. and Mauritius were started 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 believe thank cautioned at the time that ‘the relocation shows stressing tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government refers to as being characterised by fantastic power competitors’.

Require the U.K. to offer reparations for its historic function in the slave trade were revived likewise 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 primary battle 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 threat.

‘We comprehend soldiers and missiles but stop working to completely envisage the risk that having no alternative to China’s supply chains may have on our capability to respond to military aggression.’

He recommended a new security design to ‘enhance the U.K.’s tactical dynamism’ based on a rethink of migratory policy and threat evaluation, access to rare earth minerals in a market dominated by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and independence through financial investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on atomic energy.

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

‘As global economic competition magnifies, the U.K. should choose whether to embrace a strong growth program or resign itself to permanent decrease.’

Britain’s commitment to the concept of Net Zero may be admirable, but the pursuit will prevent development and obscure tactical goals, he alerted.

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

‘We are a nation that has actually stopped working to buy our economic, in our energy infrastructure. And we have considerable resources at our disposal.’

Nuclear power, consisting of using little modular reactors, might be a benefit for the British economy and energy independence.

‘But we’ve failed to commercialise them and undoubtedly 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 actually insisted was crucial to finding the cash for costly plant-building tasks.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation firm, has actually been declared for its grants for small energy-producing companies in your home, entrepreneurs have actually alerted a wider culture of ‘threat aversion’ 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 actually consistently failed to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian hazard’, allowing the trend of handled decline.

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

‘The danger to this order … has actually established partially due to the fact that of the lack of a robust will to defend it, owing in part to ponder foreign attempts to overturn the recognition of the real prowling risk they posture.’

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 up to the seriousness of purchasing defence.

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is not enough. He advised a top-down reform of ‘basically 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 basically bodies that take up immense amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing substantially,’ he told MailOnline.

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

The report describes suggestions in radical tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a renewed focus on securing Britain’s function as a leader in high-tech 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 picture. Britain’s financial stagnation could see it quickly end up being a ‘2nd tier’ partner

Boarded-up stores 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 dire circumstance after decades of sluggish growth and lowered spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of in 2015 that Euro location financial efficiency has been ‘controlled’ because around 2018, showing ‘multifaceted obstacles of energy dependency, producing vulnerabilities, and shifting worldwide trade dynamics’.

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

This stays vulnerable, nevertheless, with residents progressively agitated by the perceived 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 diplomacy and national security think thank based in the United Kingdom.

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