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

Britain is on course to ending up being a ‘2nd tier’ European nation like Spain or Italy due to economic decline and a weak military 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 investment, high tax and misguided policies that might see it lose its standing as a top-tier middle power at existing growth rates.

The stark assessment weighed that successive federal government failures in regulation and drawing in investment had triggered Britain to miss out on out on the ‘industries 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 2 months,’ he composed in The Henry Jackson Society’s latest report, Strategic Prosperity: The Case for Economic Growth as a National Security Priority.

The report examines that Britain is now on track to fall behind Poland in terms of per capita earnings by 2030, which the main European country’s military will quickly exceed the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and devices on the present trajectory.

‘The concern is that once we are reduced to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be practically impossible to get back. Nations do not come back from this,’ Dr Ibrahim informed MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be sped up decline unless we nip this in the bud and have vibrant leaders who are able to make the challenging decisions 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 utilizes a radio to talk to 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 decision to increase defence costs to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, however warned much deeper, systemic concerns threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as an internationally prominent power.

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

Why WW3 is already here … and how the UK will need 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 unable 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 fast 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 governments, not simply Starmer’s issue, of stopping working to purchase our military and basically outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting tiredness of supplying the security umbrella to Europe, Europe now has to stand 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 spending and patterns of low efficiency 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 kept in mind in the report that in spite of the ‘weakening’ of the institutions as soon as ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by hurting the last vestiges of its military might and economic power.

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

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

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

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

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 throughout an interview in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

Dr Ibhramin assessed that the U.K. appears to be acting versus its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of danger.

‘We comprehend soldiers and rockets however fail to totally develop of the danger that having no alternative to China’s supply chains might have on our ability to react to military aggression.’

He recommended a brand-new security model to ‘enhance the U.K.’s tactical dynamism’ based upon a rethink of migratory policy and hazard evaluation, access to rare earth minerals in a market dominated by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and self-reliance via financial investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on atomic energy.

‘Without instant policy changes to development, Britain will become a diminished power, reliant on stronger allies and vulnerable to foreign coercion,’ the Diplomacy columnist said.

‘As worldwide economic competitors intensifies, the U.K. must choose whether to welcome a bold growth agenda or resign itself to irreversible decrease.’

Britain’s dedication to the idea of Net Zero may be admirable, however the pursuit will hinder development and unknown tactical goals, he cautioned.

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

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

Nuclear power, consisting of the usage of small modular reactors, could be an advantage for the British economy and energy independence.

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

Britain did introduce a brand-new funding model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour politicians had firmly insisted was crucial to discovering the cash for pricey plant-building projects.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation company, has been declared for its grants for small energy-producing companies at home, business owners have warned a larger culture of ‘danger hostility’ in the U.K. stifles financial investment.

In 2022, incomes for the poorest 14 million people fell by 7.5%, per the ONS. Pictured: Waterlooville High Street, Waterlooville, Hants

Undated file image of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has actually consistently stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian hazard’, allowing the trend of handled decline.

But the resurgence of autocracies on the world stage risks further undermining the rules-based worldwide order from which Britain ‘advantages enormously’ as a globalised economy.

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

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 as much as the seriousness of buying defence.

But Dr Ibrahim alerted that this is inadequate. He urged a top-down reform of ‘essentially our whole state’ to bring the ossified state back to life and sustain it.

‘Reforming the well-being state, reforming the NHS, reforming pensions — these are basically bodies that use up enormous quantities of funds and they’ll simply keep growing considerably,’ he informed MailOnline.

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

The report outlines suggestions in radical tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a restored concentrate on securing Britain’s function as a leader in high-tech industries, 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 stagnation could see it soon become a ‘second 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 persistence that Europe pay for its own defence has cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire scenario after decades of slow development and reduced costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research assessed at the end of last year that Euro area financial performance has been ‘subdued’ since around 2018, highlighting ‘multifaceted challenges of energy dependency, making vulnerabilities, and shifting global trade characteristics’.

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

This stays delicate, nevertheless, with residents significantly agitated by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of cost effective accommodation and caught in low paying seasonal jobs.

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

SpainPoland