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

Britain is on course to ending up being a ‘second tier’ European nation like Spain or Italy due to financial decrease and a weak armed force that weakens its usefulness to allies, an expert has actually warned.

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 current development rates.

The stark evaluation weighed that successive government failures in regulation and drawing in financial investment had caused Britain to miss out on 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 most current report, Strategic Prosperity: The Case for Economic Growth as a National Security Priority.

The report assesses that Britain is now on track to fall back Poland in terms of per capita earnings by 2030, and that the main European country’s armed force will soon go beyond the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and equipment on the current trajectory.

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

‘This is going to be sped up decrease unless we nip this in the bud and have bold leaders who are able 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 utilizes a radio to speak with Archer teams from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery throughout a live fire range on Rovajärvi Training Area, throughout Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim invited the government’s choice 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 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 warned.

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

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

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

‘This is an enormous oversight on the part of subsequent federal governments, not just Starmer’s problem, of failing to buy our military and basically outsourcing 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 base on its own and the U.K. would have remained in a premium position to in fact lead European defence. But none of the European nations are.’

Slowed defence spending and patterns of low productivity are nothing new. But Britain is now also ‘stopping working to change’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based international order, stated 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 institutions when ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is reacting by hurting the last vestiges of its military may and economic power.

The U.K., he said, ‘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 been the source of much examination.

Negotiations in between the U.K. and Mauritius were begun 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 cautioned at the time that ‘the relocation demonstrates worrying strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government describes as being characterised by terrific power competition’.

Require the U.K. to provide reparations for its historic role in the servant trade were rekindled also in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer said ahead of a conference of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the program.

An Opposition 2 primary 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 evaluated that the U.K. appears to be acting against its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of risk.

‘We comprehend soldiers and rockets but fail to totally envisage the risk that having no alternative to China’s supply chains might have on our ability to react to military hostility.’

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

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

‘As global financial competition heightens, the U.K. must decide whether to embrace a bold development program or resign itself to irreparable decline.’

Britain’s commitment to the idea of Net Zero might be admirable, however the pursuit will inhibit growth and odd strategic objectives, he cautioned.

‘I am not stating that the environment is not crucial. But we simply can not afford to do this.

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

power, consisting of using little modular reactors, could be an advantage for the British economy and energy independence.

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

Britain did present a new funding design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour politicians had actually firmly insisted was essential to discovering the money for expensive plant-building projects.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation agency, has been declared for its grants for little energy-producing companies in the house, business owners have actually alerted a larger culture of ‘risk hostility’ 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 picture of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has actually regularly stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian danger’, enabling the trend of managed decline.

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

‘The hazard to this order … has actually established partially due to the fact that of the absence of a robust will to defend it, owing in part to deliberate foreign efforts to subvert the acknowledgment of the true hiding hazard they pose.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim alerted that this is not enough. He advised 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 essentially bodies that use up enormous quantities of funds and they’ll simply keep growing significantly,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You might double the NHS budget plan and it will truly not make much of a damage. So all of this will require essential reform and will take a great deal of courage from whomever is in power due to the fact that it will make them out of favor.’

The report lays out recommendations in extreme tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a restored concentrate on protecting Britain’s function as a leader in state-of-the-art industries, energy security, and global trade.

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

File picture. Britain’s financial stagnancy might 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 behind. The Trump administration’s insistence 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 reduced costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research assessed at the end of in 2015 that Euro area economic performance has been ‘subdued’ considering that around 2018, illustrating ‘multifaceted difficulties of energy dependency, producing vulnerabilities, and moving international trade dynamics’.

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

This remains vulnerable, however, with citizens significantly agitated by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of budget-friendly lodging 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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