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 military that weakens its usefulness to allies, a specialist has actually alerted.

Research professor Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning new report that the U.K. has 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 evaluation weighed that successive federal government failures in regulation and bring in financial investment had triggered Britain to miss out on out on the ‘markets 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 two 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 regards to per capita income by 2030, which the central European country’s armed force will soon exceed the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and equipment on the present trajectory.

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

‘This is going to be sped up decrease unless we nip this in the bud and have vibrant leaders who have the ability to make the hard decisions today.’

People pass boarded up shops 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 crews 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 warned much deeper, systemic issues threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a worldwide prominent power.

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

Why WW3 is currently here … and how the UK will require 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 likewise a smaller sized army and one that is unable to sustain implementation at scale.’

This is of specific concern at a time of heightened geopolitical tension, with Britain pegged to be among the leading forces in Europe’s quick rearmament job.

‘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 huge oversight on the part of subsequent federal governments, not simply Starmer’s problem, of stopping working to purchase our military and essentially contracting out security to the United States and NATO,’ he told MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting tiredness of providing the security umbrella to Europe, Europe now needs to base 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 performance are nothing new. But Britain is now also ‘failing to change’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based global order, stated 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 when ‘protected’ by the U.S., Britain is reacting by harming the last vestiges of its military might and economic power.

The U.K., he stated, ‘appears to be making increasingly costly 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 between the U.K. and Mauritius were begun by the Tories in 2022, however an arrangement 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 relocation demonstrates fretting tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government explains as being characterised by terrific power competition’.

Calls for the U.K. to offer reparations for its historic function in the slave trade were revived also in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer said 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 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 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 missiles but stop working to totally conceive of the risk that having no option to China’s supply chains may have on our ability to react to military hostility.’

He recommended a brand-new security design to ‘boost the U.K.’s strategic dynamism’ based upon a rethink of migratory policy and threat evaluation, access to uncommon earth minerals in a market controlled by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and self-reliance through financial investment 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 diminished power, reliant on stronger allies and susceptible to foreign browbeating,’ the Foreign Policy writer said.

‘As worldwide intensifies, the U.K. needs to choose whether to welcome a strong growth program or resign itself to irreversible decrease.’

Britain’s commitment to the idea of Net Zero may be admirable, however the pursuit will inhibit growth and unknown tactical objectives, he alerted.

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

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

Nuclear power, including making use of small modular reactors, could be an advantage for the British economy and energy independence.

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

Britain did introduce a brand-new financing design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour politicians had insisted was crucial to discovering the cash for expensive plant-building jobs.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation company, has actually been heralded for its grants for little energy-producing business in your home, entrepreneurs have alerted a broader culture of ‘risk hostility’ in the U.K. suppresses investment.

In 2022, earnings for the poorest 14 million people 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 consistently stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian danger’, allowing the pattern of managed decline.

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

‘The danger to this order … has actually established partially because of the lack of a robust will to protect it, owing in part to ponder foreign attempts to subvert the recognition of the true hiding risk they position.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim cautioned 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 basically bodies that use up tremendous amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing considerably,’ he told MailOnline.

‘You might double the NHS spending plan and it will truly not make much of a damage. So all of this will need basic reform and will take a lot of guts 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 migration policies, and a restored focus on protecting Britain’s function as a leader in modern markets, energy security, and international trade.

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

File picture. Britain’s economic stagnancy might see it quickly end up being a ‘2nd tier’ partner

Boarded-up stores in Blackpool as more than 13,000 shops closed their doors for excellent in 2024

Britain is not alone in falling back. The Trump administration’s insistence that Europe spend for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire scenario after years of sluggish growth and lowered spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of in 2015 that Euro area financial efficiency has actually been ‘subdued’ because around 2018, illustrating ‘multifaceted difficulties of energy reliance, producing vulnerabilities, and shifting worldwide trade characteristics’.

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

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

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

SpainPoland