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 specialist has actually alerted.

Research teacher 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 stark assessment weighed that successive federal government failures in regulation and attracting investment had caused Britain to miss out on out on the ‘markets of the future’ courted by established economies.

‘Britain no longer has the commercial 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 examines that Britain is now on track to fall back Poland in terms of per capita income by 2030, and that the central European nation’s armed force will quickly surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and devices on the existing trajectory.

‘The issue is that as soon as we are downgraded to a second tier middle power, it’s going to be almost impossible to return. Nations do not return from this,’ Dr Ibrahim told MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be accelerated decline unless we nip this in the bud and have vibrant leaders who have the ability to make the difficult decisions right now.’

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

Dr Ibrahim invited the federal government’s choice to increase defence costs to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, but alerted much deeper, systemic problems 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 behind even second-tier European powers’, he cautioned.

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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 implementation at scale.’

This is of specific concern at a time of heightened geopolitical tension, with Britain pegged to be amongst the leading forces in Europe’s quick rearmament task.

‘There are 230 brigades in Ukraine right now, 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 governments, not simply Starmer’s issue, of stopping working to invest in our military and essentially outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting fatigue of supplying 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 countries are.’

Slowed defence costs and patterns of low productivity are absolutely nothing new. But Britain is now likewise ‘failing to change’ to the Trump administration’s shock 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 institutions when ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by harming the last vestiges of its military might and .

The U.K., he stated, ‘seems to be making progressively costly gestures’ like the ₤ 9bn handover of the tactical 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, however an agreement was revealed 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 relocation shows stressing strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government describes as being characterised by excellent power competition’.

Calls for the U.K. to provide reparations for its historic 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 agenda.

A Challenger 2 main battle tank of the British forces during the NATO’s Spring Storm exercise 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 evaluated 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 missiles but stop working to completely envisage the danger that having no alternative to China’s supply chains might have on our ability to react to military aggression.’

He suggested a brand-new security design to ‘enhance the U.K.’s tactical dynamism’ based upon a rethink of migratory policy and danger assessment, access to uncommon earth minerals in a market dominated by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and independence through investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on nuclear energy.

‘Without instant policy changes to reignite development, Britain will become a reduced power, reliant on stronger allies and susceptible to foreign browbeating,’ the Foreign Policy writer stated.

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

Britain’s dedication to the concept of Net Zero might be admirable, but the pursuit will hinder growth 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 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 failed to commercialise them and clearly that’s going to take a considerable amount of time.’

Britain did introduce a brand-new funding design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour politicians had actually firmly insisted was key to discovering the money for pricey plant-building jobs.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development firm, has been heralded for its grants for little energy-producing companies in the house, entrepreneurs have actually alerted a broader culture of ‘danger hostility’ in the U.K. stifles financial 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 picture of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

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

But the resurgence of autocracies on the world stage threats even more weakening the rules-based international order from which Britain ‘benefits enormously’ as a globalised economy.

‘The hazard to this order … has actually established partly since of the absence of a robust will to defend it, owing in part to deliberate foreign efforts to subvert the recognition of the true hiding threat 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 way towards waking Britain approximately the seriousness of investing in defence.

But Dr Ibrahim cautioned that this is inadequate. He advised 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 use up enormous amounts of funds and they’ll just keep growing substantially,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You might double the NHS spending plan and it will truly not make much of a dent. So all of this will need essential reform and will take a lot of guts from whomever is in power since it will make them out of favor.’

The report outlines recommendations in radical tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a renewed concentrate on securing Britain’s function as a leader in high-tech industries, energy security, and international trade.

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

File photo. Britain’s economic stagnancy might see it quickly become a ‘second 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 insistence that Europe spend for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s alarming scenario after years of slow development and lowered costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of in 2015 that Euro location economic performance has actually been ‘controlled’ considering that around 2018, illustrating ‘diverse obstacles of energy dependence, producing vulnerabilities, and moving international trade dynamics’.

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

This stays vulnerable, however, with homeowners significantly upset by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of affordable accommodation and trapped 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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