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

Britain is on course to becoming a ‘second tier’ European country like Spain or Italy due to economic decrease and a weak military that weakens its usefulness to allies, an expert has actually alerted.

Research professor Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning brand-new report that the U.K. has been paralysed by low financial investment, high tax and misguided policies that might see it lose its standing as a top-tier middle power at current growth rates.

The plain assessment weighed that successive government failures in regulation and drawing in investment had triggered Britain to lose out on the ‘markets 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 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 nation’s armed force will soon go beyond the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and devices on the present trajectory.

‘The problem is that when we are downgraded to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be practically impossible to return. Nations don’t return from this,’ Dr Ibrahim told MailOnline today.

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

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

Dr Ibrahim welcomed the federal government’s decision to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, but alerted much deeper, systemic concerns threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a globally influential power.

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

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

This is of specific issue at a time of increased geopolitical tension, with Britain pegged to be among the leading forces in Europe’s rapid 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 an enormous oversight on the part of governments, not simply Starmer’s issue, of failing to purchase our military and essentially outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,’ he told 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 been 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 brand-new. But Britain is now also ‘stopping working to change’ to the Trump administration’s shock to the rules-based global order, stated Dr Ibrahim.

The previous advisor to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review kept in mind in the report that in spite of the ‘weakening’ of the organizations when ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is reacting by harming the last vestiges of its military might and financial power.

The U.K., he stated, ‘seems to be making significantly expensive 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 actually been the source of much examination.

Negotiations in between the U.K. and Mauritius were started by the Tories in 2022, however an agreement was revealed by the Labour federal government last October.

Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security think thank cautioned at the time that ‘the relocation shows fretting tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government explains as being characterised by great power competition’.

Calls for the U.K. to supply reparations for its historic role in the slave trade were revived likewise in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a conference of Commonwealth nations that reparations would not be on the agenda.

An Opposition 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 a press conference 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 danger.

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

He recommended a brand-new security model to ‘improve the U.K.’s tactical dynamism’ based on 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 self-reliance through investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on atomic energy.

‘Without immediate policy modifications to reignite development, Britain will become a reduced power, reliant on more powerful allies and vulnerable to foreign coercion,’ the Foreign Policy writer stated.

‘As international financial competition heightens, the U.K. must choose whether to accept a strong development agenda or resign itself to irreversible decrease.’

Britain’s commitment to the idea of Net Zero might be admirable, however the pursuit will inhibit development and obscure strategic goals, he alerted.

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

‘We are a country that has actually failed to purchase our economic, in our energy infrastructure. And we have substantial resources at our disposal.’

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

‘But we’ve failed to commercialise them and clearly that’s going to take a considerable quantity of time.’

Britain did introduce a brand-new financing design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour political leaders had actually firmly insisted was key to discovering the cash for costly plant-building projects.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development agency, has actually been declared for its grants for small energy-producing companies at home, business owners have cautioned a larger culture of ‘threat 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 photo of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has regularly failed to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian risk’, permitting the trend of managed decrease.

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

‘The danger to this order … has established partly since of the lack of a robust will to protect it, owing in part to deliberate foreign efforts to subvert the recognition of the true lurking danger they pose.’

The Trump administration’s cautioning to NATO allies in Europe that they will have to do their own bidding has gone some method towards waking Britain approximately the urgency of investing in defence.

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is insufficient. He prompted 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 basically bodies that use up immense quantities of funds and they’ll simply keep growing substantially,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You might double the NHS budget and it will really not make much of a damage. So all of this will require basic reform and will take a great deal of nerve from whomever is in power since it will make them unpopular.’

The report lays out suggestions in radical tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a renewed focus on securing Britain’s function as a leader in state-of-the-art markets, energy security, and global trade.

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

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

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

Britain is not alone in falling back. The Trump administration’s insistence that Europe spend for its own defence has cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire situation after years of sluggish growth and minimized costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of in 2015 that Euro location economic efficiency has actually been ‘controlled’ since around 2018, showing ‘diverse difficulties of energy reliance, producing vulnerabilities, and shifting international trade dynamics’.

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

This stays vulnerable, however, with locals increasingly agitated by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of budget friendly accommodation and caught in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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