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

Britain is on course to ending up being a ‘second tier’ European country like Spain or Italy due to economic decrease and a weak armed force that undermines its effectiveness to allies, a professional has actually warned.

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 misdirected policies that could see it lose its standing as a top-tier middle power at existing development rates.

The plain assessment weighed that successive government failures in regulation and drawing in investment had actually 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 assesses that Britain is now on track to fall behind Poland in terms of per capita earnings by 2030, which the central European country’s armed force will quickly surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and equipment on the present trajectory.

‘The concern is that as soon as we are downgraded to a second tier middle power, it’s going to be almost difficult to return. Nations don’t return from this,’ Dr Ibrahim informed MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be accelerated decrease unless we nip this in the bud and have vibrant leaders who are able to make the difficult 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 uses a radio to speak to Archer teams from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery during a live fire range on Rovajärvi Training Area, during 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 concerns threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a worldwide prominent power.

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

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‘Not just is the U.K. anticipated to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, however likewise a smaller sized 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 amongst the leading forces in Europe’s fast rearmament task.

‘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 federal governments, not simply Starmer’s issue, of failing to invest in our military and essentially contracting out 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 base on its own and the U.K. would have been in a premium position to really lead European defence. But none of the European countries are.’

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

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

The U.K., he stated, ‘appears to be making 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 analysis.

Negotiations between the U.K. and Mauritius were started by the Tories in 2022, however a contract was announced by the Labour government last October.

Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security believe thank alerted at the time that ‘the move demonstrates worrying tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government describes as being characterised by fantastic power competition’.

Require the U.K. to supply reparations for its historical function in the slave trade were rekindled also in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer said ahead of a conference of Commonwealth nations that reparations would not be on the program.

A Challenger 2 primary battle 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 an interview in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

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

‘We understand soldiers and missiles however fail to fully develop of the risk that having no option to China’s supply chains may have on our capability to react to military aggressiveness.’

He suggested a brand-new security design to ‘boost the U.K.’s tactical dynamism’ based on a rethink of migratory policy and risk evaluation, access to unusual earth minerals in a market controlled 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 instant policy changes to reignite growth, Britain will become a reduced power, reliant on stronger allies and vulnerable to foreign coercion,’ the Diplomacy columnist said.

‘As international economic competition magnifies, the U.K. should decide whether to accept a strong development agenda or resign itself to irreversible decline.’

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

‘I am not saying that the environment is trivial. But we just can not pay for to do this.

‘We are a country that has actually stopped working to purchase our financial, in our energy infrastructure. And we have significant resources at our disposal.’

Nuclear power, including making use of little modular reactors, could be a boon for the British economy and energy independence.

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

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

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation agency, has actually been heralded for its grants for little energy-producing companies in your home, entrepreneurs have actually warned a wider culture of ‘danger hostility’ in the U.K. stifles investment.

In 2022, incomes 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 regularly failed to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian risk’, allowing the trend of managed decline.

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

‘The threat to this order … has actually developed partially because of the absence of a robust will to safeguard it, owing in part to deliberate foreign attempts to overturn the recognition of the true hiding hazard they position.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim alerted that this is inadequate. He urged 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 take up tremendous quantities of funds and they’ll just keep growing significantly,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You could double the NHS budget and it will truly not make much of a dent. So all of this will need essential reform and will take a great deal of guts from whomever is in power since it will make them unpopular.’

The report lays out suggestions in extreme tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a restored concentrate on securing Britain’s function as a leader in modern markets, energy security, and international trade.

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

File image. Britain’s financial stagnation might see it soon become 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 behind. The Trump administration’s insistence that Europe spend for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire situation after years of slow growth and reduced spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of in 2015 that Euro area economic performance has been ‘controlled’ given that around 2018, illustrating ‘multifaceted challenges of energy dependence, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and shifting global trade dynamics’.

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

This remains delicate, however, with residents progressively agitated by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of budget-friendly accommodation and caught in low paying seasonal jobs.

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

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