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

Britain is on course to ending up being a ‘2nd tier’ European country like Spain or Italy due to economic decrease and a weak military that undermines its usefulness to allies, a professional has alerted.

Research professor Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning brand-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 development rates.

The stark evaluation weighed that succeeding federal government failures in guideline and drawing in financial investment had caused Britain to lose out on the ‘markets of the future’ courted by developed 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, which the central European country’s military will quickly surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both and equipment on the existing trajectory.

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

‘This is going to be sped up decrease unless we nip this in the bud and have vibrant leaders who have the ability to make the tough decisions right now.’

People pass boarded up shops on March 20, 2024 in Hastings, England

A British soldier refills 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 throughout a live fire range 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 problems 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 back even second-tier European powers’, he cautioned.

Why WW3 is already here … and how the UK will require to lead in America’s absence

‘Not just is the U.K. predicted to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, but also a smaller army and one that is not able to sustain release 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 project.

‘There are 230 brigades in Ukraine right now, Russian and Ukrainian. Not a single European nation to mount a single heavy armoured brigade.’

‘This is a huge oversight on the part of subsequent governments, not simply Starmer’s problem, of failing to purchase our military and basically 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 has to stand on its own and the U.K. would have been in a premium position to actually lead European defence. But none of the European countries are.’

Slowed defence spending and patterns of low productivity are absolutely nothing brand-new. But Britain is now also ‘stopping working to adjust’ to the Trump administration’s shock to the rules-based international order, said Dr Ibrahim.

The former consultant to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review noted in the report that in spite of the ‘weakening’ of the organizations once ‘protected’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by damaging the last vestiges of its military might and economic power.

The U.K., he stated, ‘seems to be making significantly 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 between the U.K. and Mauritius were started by the Tories in 2022, but a contract was revealed by the Labour federal 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 worrying tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government refers to as being characterised by fantastic power competition’.

Calls for the U.K. to provide reparations for its historic function in the slave 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 fight 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 during a press conference in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

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

‘We understand soldiers and rockets but fail to fully envisage the risk that having no option to China’s supply chains may have on our ability to respond to military hostility.’

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

‘Without immediate policy changes to reignite development, Britain will end up being a diminished power, reliant on stronger allies and susceptible to foreign browbeating,’ the Diplomacy columnist said.

‘As global financial competitors magnifies, the U.K. must decide whether to accept a bold development agenda or resign itself to permanent decline.’

Britain’s commitment to the idea of Net Zero may 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 pay for to do this.

‘We are a nation that has failed to buy our economic, in our energy infrastructure. And we have significant resources at our disposal.’

Nuclear power, consisting of using small modular reactors, could be a boon for the British economy and energy self-reliance.

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

Britain did introduce a brand-new financing design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour politicians had actually insisted was essential to finding the cash for expensive plant-building jobs.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development company, has been declared for its grants for small energy-producing business in the house, business owners have cautioned a wider culture of ‘risk aversion’ in the U.K. suppresses 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 stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian danger’, allowing the pattern of managed decline.

But the resurgence of autocracies on the world phase dangers even more weakening the rules-based global order from which Britain ‘benefits tremendously’ as a globalised economy.

‘The threat to this order … has developed partly because of the lack of a robust will to defend it, owing in part to ponder foreign efforts to overturn the acknowledgment of the real prowling danger they present.’

The Trump administration’s alerting 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 alerted that this is inadequate. He urged a top-down reform of ‘basically 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 essentially bodies that take up immense 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 fundamental reform and will take a great deal of courage from whomever is in power since it will make them undesirable.’

The report lays out recommendations in radical tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a restored concentrate on securing Britain’s role as a leader in high-tech markets, energy security, and global trade.

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

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

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

Britain is not alone in falling back. The Trump administration’s insistence that Europe pay for its own defence has cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire circumstance after decades of slow development and reduced costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research evaluated at the end of in 2015 that Euro location economic performance has actually been ‘controlled’ considering that around 2018, highlighting ‘multifaceted challenges of energy dependence, making vulnerabilities, and moving global trade dynamics’.

There remain extensive disparities between European economies; German deindustrialisation has struck organizations hard and forced redundancies, while Spain has actually grown in line with its tourism-focused economy.

This stays delicate, however, with citizens progressively agitated by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of affordable lodging and caught in low paying seasonal jobs.

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

SpainPoland