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

Britain is on course to becoming a ‘2nd tier’ European country like Spain or Italy due to economic decline and a weak armed force that undermines its usefulness to allies, an expert has alerted.

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 misdirected policies that might see it lose its standing as a top-tier middle power at current growth rates.

The plain assessment weighed that succeeding government failures in policy and attracting financial investment had caused 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 composed in The Henry Jackson Society’s most current report, Strategic Prosperity: The Case for Economic Growth as a National Security Priority.

The report evaluates that Britain is now on track to fall behind Poland in regards to per capita earnings by 2030, and that the main European nation’s military will quickly exceed the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and devices on the current trajectory.

‘The issue is that as soon as we are devalued to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be almost impossible to return. Nations do not come back from this,’ Dr Ibrahim told MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be sped up decline unless we nip this in the bud and have bold leaders who are able to make the difficult choices 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 range on Rovajärvi Training Area, during Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim welcomed the government’s decision to increase defence costs to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, however cautioned much deeper, systemic issues threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a globally influential 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 also a smaller army and one that is unable to sustain implementation at scale.’

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

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

‘This is an enormous oversight on the part of subsequent governments, not just Starmer’s issue, of failing to buy our military and 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 has 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 spending and patterns of low productivity are absolutely nothing brand-new. But Britain is now also ‘failing to change’ to the Trump administration’s shock to the rules-based global order, said Dr Ibrahim.

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

The U.K., he said, ‘seems to be making increasingly pricey 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 between the U.K. and Mauritius were begun by the Tories in 2022, but a contract 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 move demonstrates stressing tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government refers to as being characterised by great power competitors’.

Calls for the U.K. to provide reparations for its historic function in the servant trade were rekindled also in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a conference of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the agenda.

A Challenger 2 main fight tank of the British forces throughout 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 during an interview in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

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

‘We comprehend soldiers and missiles but stop working to fully envisage the threat 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 hazard evaluation, access to uncommon earth minerals in a market dominated by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and independence through financial investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on nuclear energy.

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

‘As international financial competition magnifies, the U.K. must decide whether to accept a vibrant development program or resign itself to permanent decrease.’

Britain’s commitment to the idea of Net Zero may be admirable, however the pursuit will prevent development and obscure strategic objectives, he alerted.

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

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

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

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

Britain did introduce a new financing model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour politicians had firmly insisted was essential to finding the cash for expensive plant-building projects.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation agency, has been declared for its grants for small energy-producing business in your home, entrepreneurs have cautioned a broader culture of ‘threat hostility’ in the U.K. suppresses 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 photo of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

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

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

‘The threat to this order … has developed partly since of the absence of a robust will to protect it, owing in part to deliberate foreign attempts to overturn the acknowledgment of the true prowling risk they posture.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is insufficient. He urged a top-down reform of ‘basically 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 basically bodies that use up tremendous amounts of funds and they’ll just keep growing substantially,’ he told MailOnline.

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

The report outlines suggestions in extreme tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a renewed concentrate on securing Britain’s role as a leader in modern markets, energy security, and worldwide trade.

Vladimir Putin talks to the guv of Arkhangelsk region Alexander Tsybulsky during their conference at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, March 11, 2025

File picture. Britain’s financial stagnation might see it soon end up being a ‘second 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 behind. The Trump administration’s persistence that Europe spend for its own defence has cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s alarming situation after decades of slow development and reduced costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research evaluated at the end of in 2015 that Euro location economic performance has actually been ‘controlled’ considering that around 2018, highlighting ‘multifaceted challenges of energy dependence, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and shifting global trade characteristics’.

There stay profound discrepancies between European economies; German deindustrialisation has actually hit services difficult and forced redundancies, while Spain has actually grown in line with its tourism-focused economy.

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

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

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