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

Britain is on course to becoming a ‘second tier’ European nation like Spain or Italy due to financial decrease and a weak armed force that undermines its usefulness to allies, a professional 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 financial investment, high tax and misdirected policies that could see it lose its standing as a top-tier middle power at current growth rates.

The plain evaluation weighed that succeeding government failures in guideline and attracting investment had triggered Britain to lose 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 composed in The Henry Jackson Society’s newest report, Strategic Prosperity: The Case for Economic Growth as a National Security Priority.

The report examines that is now on track to fall back Poland in regards to per capita income by 2030, which the main European country’s military will quickly exceed the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and devices on the current trajectory.

‘The problem is that once we are reduced to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be virtually difficult to get back. Nations don’t 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 strong leaders who have the ability to make the tough 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 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 welcomed the government’s decision to increase defence costs to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, however alerted much deeper, systemic issues threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as an internationally prominent power.

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

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‘Not only is the U.K. forecasted to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, but also a smaller sized army and one that is not able to sustain release at scale.’

This is of particular issue at a time of increased geopolitical stress, with Britain pegged to be amongst the leading forces in Europe’s fast rearmament task.

‘There are 230 brigades in Ukraine today, 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 governments, not just Starmer’s issue, of failing to buy our military and essentially outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,’ he told MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting tiredness of offering 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 costs and patterns of low efficiency are absolutely nothing new. But Britain is now also ‘stopping working to change’ to the Trump administration’s shock to the rules-based worldwide 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 institutions when ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by harming the last vestiges of its military may and economic power.

The U.K., he stated, ‘seems to be making significantly expensive gestures’ like the ₤ 9bn handover of the strategic 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, but a contract was revealed by the Labour federal government last October.

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

Calls for the U.K. to supply reparations for its historic function in the servant trade were rekindled likewise in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer said ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the program.

A Challenger 2 main 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 during a press conference in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

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

‘We comprehend soldiers and missiles but fail to fully develop of the danger that having no option to China’s supply chains might have on our ability to react to military aggressiveness.’

He recommended a new security model to ‘improve the U.K.’s tactical dynamism’ based on a rethink of migratory policy and danger assessment, access to uncommon earth minerals in a market controlled by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and independence through 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 more powerful allies and susceptible to foreign coercion,’ the Foreign Policy columnist stated.

‘As international financial competitors heightens, the U.K. should decide whether to accept a strong development agenda or resign itself to irreparable decrease.’

Britain’s commitment to the idea of Net Zero may be admirable, but the pursuit will prevent growth and odd tactical objectives, he warned.

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

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

Nuclear power, consisting of 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 financing model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour political leaders had actually insisted was crucial to finding the money for costly plant-building projects.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development firm, has actually been declared for its grants for little energy-producing companies at home, entrepreneurs have actually cautioned a larger culture of ‘threat aversion’ in the U.K. suppresses 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 photo of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has consistently failed to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian threat’, enabling the pattern of managed decline.

But the renewal of autocracies on the world phase threats further weakening the rules-based global order from which Britain ‘advantages immensely’ as a globalised economy.

‘The danger to this order … has actually developed partly because of the lack of a robust will to safeguard it, owing in part to deliberate foreign attempts to overturn the recognition of the real lurking threat they present.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is not enough. He urged a top-down reform of ‘basically 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 take up enormous amounts of funds and they’ll just keep growing considerably,’ he told 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 lot of guts from whomever is in power due to the fact that it will make them out of favor.’

The report details recommendations in radical tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a renewed focus on protecting Britain’s role as a leader in high-tech industries, energy security, and international 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 could see it soon become a ‘2nd tier’ partner

Boarded-up stores 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 pay for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s alarming situation after decades of slow development and decreased spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of last year that Euro location financial performance has actually been ‘suppressed’ given that around 2018, illustrating ‘complex difficulties of energy reliance, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and moving worldwide trade characteristics’.

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

This remains fragile, nevertheless, with homeowners increasingly upset by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of cost effective lodging and caught in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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