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 armed force that undermines its effectiveness to allies, a specialist 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 present growth rates.

The stark evaluation weighed that successive federal government failures in guideline and drawing in investment had actually caused Britain to miss out on 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 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 back Poland in regards to per capita income by 2030, which the central European country’s armed force will quickly exceed the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and devices on the current trajectory.

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

People pass boarded up stores on March 20, 2024 in Hastings, England

A British soldier refills his rifle on February 17, 2025 in Smardan, Romania

Staff Sergeant Rai uses a radio to talk to Archer crews from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery during a live fire range on Rovajärvi Training Area, throughout Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim invited the government’s choice to increase defence spending 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 an internationally influential power.

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

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‘Not only is the U.K. forecasted to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, however also a smaller army and one that is unable to sustain deployment at scale.’

This is of specific concern at a time of increased geopolitical tension, with Britain pegged to be amongst the leading forces in Europe’s fast rearmament project.

‘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 federal governments, not simply Starmer’s problem, of failing to purchase our military and essentially outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,’ he told MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting fatigue of offering 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 in fact lead European defence. But none of the European nations are.’

Slowed defence spending and patterns of low productivity are nothing new. But Britain is now also ‘failing 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 noted in the report that in spite of the ‘weakening’ of the organizations once ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is reacting by hurting the last vestiges of its military may and economic 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 been the source of much scrutiny.

Negotiations between the U.K. and Mauritius were begun 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 alerted at the time that ‘the relocation demonstrates fretting tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government describes as being characterised by fantastic power competition’.

Calls for the U.K. to offer reparations for its historical role in the slave trade were rekindled also in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the program.

A Challenger 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 Tusk speak during a press conference in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

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

‘We understand soldiers and rockets however fail to completely conceive of the danger that having no alternative to China’s supply chains may have on our ability to respond to military hostility.’

He suggested a new security design to ‘enhance the U.K.’s tactical dynamism’ based upon a rethink of migratory policy and risk assessment, access to rare earth minerals in a market controlled by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and self-reliance by means of investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on atomic energy.

‘Without instant policy changes to reignite development, Britain will become a reduced power, reliant on more powerful allies and vulnerable to foreign coercion,’ the Foreign Policy writer said.

‘As global financial competition magnifies, the U.K. should decide whether to welcome a strong growth program or resign itself to irreparable decrease.’

Britain’s dedication to the concept of Net Zero may be laudable, but the pursuit will hinder growth and unknown tactical goals, he cautioned.

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

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

Nuclear power, consisting of using little modular reactors, could be a benefit for the British economy and energy self-reliance.

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

Britain did introduce a brand-new funding design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour politicians had firmly insisted was key to finding the cash for pricey plant-building jobs.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development agency, has been heralded for its grants for little energy-producing business in the house, entrepreneurs have cautioned a broader culture of ‘danger hostility’ in the U.K. stifles 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 image of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has consistently failed to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian danger’, permitting the trend of managed decline.

But the renewal of autocracies on the world stage threats even more weakening the rules-based worldwide order from which Britain ‘benefits enormously’ as a globalised economy.

‘The danger to this order … has developed partly since of the lack of a robust will to safeguard it, owing in part to ponder foreign attempts to overturn the acknowledgment of the true lurking threat 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 as much as the seriousness of investing in defence.

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is insufficient. He urged 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 enormous amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing substantially,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You might double the NHS spending plan and it will actually not make much of a dent. So all of this will need fundamental reform and will take a lot of guts from whomever is in power since it will make them out of favor.’

The report lays out suggestions in extreme tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a renewed concentrate on securing Britain’s function as a leader in modern markets, energy security, and international trade.

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

File photo. Britain’s economic stagnancy 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 excellent in 2024

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

The Centre for Economic Policy Research evaluated at the end of in 2015 that Euro area financial efficiency has actually been ‘suppressed’ since around 2018, showing ‘complex challenges of energy dependency, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and shifting international trade characteristics’.

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

This remains fragile, nevertheless, with citizens significantly agitated by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of inexpensive accommodation and caught in low paying seasonal jobs.

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

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