Poland Set to ‘Soon 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 economic decline and a weak military that weakens its usefulness to allies, a professional has actually cautioned.

Research teacher 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 current development rates.

The plain assessment weighed that successive government failures in guideline and attracting 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 two months,’ he wrote in The Henry Jackson Society’s latest 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 military will quickly surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and equipment on the existing trajectory.

‘The issue is that when we are downgraded to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be practically difficult to return. Nations do not come back from this,’ Dr Ibrahim told MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be accelerated decline unless we nip this in the bud and have bold leaders who have the ability to make the hard choices right now.’

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 crews from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery throughout a live fire variety on Rovajärvi Training Area, throughout Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

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

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

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‘Not just is the U.K. forecasted 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 increased geopolitical tension, 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 country to install a single heavy armoured brigade.’

‘This is a massive oversight on the part of subsequent federal governments, not simply Starmer’s problem, of stopping working 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 supplying 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 in fact lead European defence. But none of the European nations are.’

Slowed defence costs and patterns of low efficiency are absolutely nothing new. But Britain is now likewise ‘stopping working to change’ to the Trump administration’s shock to the rules-based global order, stated Dr Ibrahim.

The previous 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 ‘protected’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by harming the last vestiges of its military may and financial 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 been the source of much analysis.

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

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

Require the U.K. to provide reparations for its historical function in the slave trade were revived likewise in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth nations that reparations would not be on the program.

An Opposition 2 primary fight tank of the British forces during the NATO’s Spring Storm exercise in Kilingi-Nomme, Estonia, Wednesday, May 15, 2024

Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk speak throughout a press conference in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

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

‘We comprehend soldiers and rockets but stop working to fully envisage the threat that having no alternative to China’s supply chains may have on our capability to react to military aggressiveness.’

He suggested a brand-new security design 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 controlled by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and self-reliance by means of in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on atomic energy.

‘Without immediate policy changes to reignite growth, Britain will end up being a decreased power, reliant on more powerful allies and susceptible to foreign browbeating,’ the Diplomacy writer stated.

‘As global economic competition intensifies, the U.K. should choose whether to welcome a strong growth program or resign itself to irreversible decrease.’

Britain’s dedication to the concept of Net Zero might be laudable, but the pursuit will inhibit development and odd strategic goals, he cautioned.

‘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 actually stopped working to invest in our financial, in our energy infrastructure. And we have considerable resources at our disposal.’

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

‘But we have actually failed to commercialise them and clearly that’s going to take a significant quantity of time.’

Britain did present a new funding model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour politicians had actually insisted was key to discovering the cash for expensive plant-building tasks.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation firm, has been heralded for its grants for small energy-producing business in your home, business owners have alerted a wider culture of ‘risk aversion’ in the U.K. stifles 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 photo of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has actually regularly stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian threat’, enabling the pattern of handled decrease.

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

‘The hazard to this order … has actually developed partly due to the fact that of the lack of a robust will to defend it, owing in part to ponder foreign efforts to subvert the recognition of the real hiding threat they present.’

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 seriousness of investing in defence.

But Dr Ibrahim cautioned that this is insufficient. He prompted 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 use up tremendous amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing substantially,’ he informed MailOnline.

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

The report details recommendations in extreme tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a renewed concentrate on protecting Britain’s role as a leader in modern industries, energy security, and global trade.

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

File image. Britain’s economic stagnation might see it soon end up being a ‘2nd tier’ partner

Boarded-up shops in Blackpool as more than 13,000 stores 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 sluggish growth and reduced costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of in 2015 that Euro location financial performance has been ‘subdued’ because around 2018, highlighting ‘diverse difficulties of energy dependency, making vulnerabilities, and shifting international trade characteristics’.

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

This stays delicate, nevertheless, with citizens increasingly agitated by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of cost effective accommodation and trapped in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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