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 financial decrease and a weak military that weakens its usefulness to allies, an expert has actually alerted.

Research teacher 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 might see it lose its standing as a top-tier middle power at existing growth rates.

The stark evaluation weighed that successive government failures in regulation and bring in 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 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 terms of per capita income by 2030, and that the central European nation’s armed force will quickly surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and equipment on the existing trajectory.

‘The problem is that when we are devalued to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be almost difficult to get back. 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 have the ability to make the challenging 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 with Archer teams from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery during a live fire variety on Rovajärvi Training Area, during Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim invited 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 worldwide prominent 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. anticipated to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, but also a smaller army and one that is unable to sustain implementation at scale.’

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

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

‘This is a massive oversight on the part of subsequent governments, not simply Starmer’s problem, of failing to purchase our military and basically outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,’ he told MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting fatigue of providing the security umbrella to Europe, Europe now needs to stand on its own and the U.K. would have remained in a premium position to really lead European defence. But none of the European countries are.’

Slowed defence spending and patterns of low efficiency are absolutely nothing new. But Britain is now likewise ‘failing to change’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based global order, said Dr Ibrahim.

The former advisor to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review kept in mind in the report that in spite of the ‘weakening’ of the institutions once ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is responding 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 strategic 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 in between the U.K. and Mauritius were started by the Tories in 2022, but an arrangement was announced by the Labour government last October.

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

Require the U.K. to supply reparations for its historic function in the servant trade were revived also in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer said ahead of a conference of Commonwealth nations that reparations would not be on the program.

An Opposition 2 primary battle 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 during an interview 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 threat.

‘We comprehend soldiers and missiles but stop working to totally envisage the risk that having no alternative to China’s supply chains might have on our ability to react to military aggression.’

He recommended a brand-new security model to ‘enhance the U.K.’s strategic dynamism’ based upon a rethink of migratory policy and danger evaluation, access to uncommon earth minerals in a market controlled by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and independence by means of investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on atomic energy.

‘Without instant policy changes to reignite growth, Britain will become a diminished power, reliant on more powerful allies and vulnerable to foreign browbeating,’ the Diplomacy columnist said.

‘As global economic competitors magnifies, the U.K. should choose whether to accept a vibrant growth program or resign itself to irreparable decrease.’

Britain’s commitment to the idea of Net Zero may be laudable, but the pursuit will prevent development and odd tactical goals, he cautioned.

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

‘We are a nation that has stopped working to buy our financial, in our energy facilities. And we have significant resources at our disposal.’

Nuclear power, consisting of making use of small modular reactors, might be a benefit for the British economy and energy independence.

‘But we’ve failed to commercialise them and undoubtedly that’s going to take a substantial amount of time.’

Britain did introduce a new funding model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour political leaders had firmly insisted was key to finding the cash for costly plant-building tasks.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development agency, has actually been heralded for its grants for small energy-producing companies in the house, entrepreneurs have actually cautioned a broader culture of ‘risk aversion’ in the U.K. stifles investment.

In 2022, incomes for the poorest 14 million individuals 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 actually regularly stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian risk’, enabling the pattern of managed decrease.

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

‘The risk to this order … has actually developed partly since of the lack of a robust will to defend it, owing in part to deliberate foreign efforts to subvert the recognition of the true hiding hazard they pose.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim cautioned that this is insufficient. He advised a top-down reform of ‘essentially 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 essentially bodies that use up tremendous quantities of funds and they’ll just keep growing considerably,’ he .

‘You could double the NHS spending plan and it will really not make much of a dent. So all of this will need basic reform and will take a lot of courage from whomever is in power because it will make them out of favor.’

The report details suggestions in radical tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a renewed focus on securing Britain’s function as a leader in modern industries, energy security, and global trade.

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

File picture. Britain’s financial stagnancy might see it quickly end up being a ‘second tier’ partner

Boarded-up shops 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 persistence that Europe pay for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s alarming scenario after decades of slow development and reduced costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research evaluated at the end of last year that Euro area economic performance has been ‘suppressed’ because around 2018, showing ‘diverse obstacles of energy dependency, making vulnerabilities, and moving global trade dynamics’.

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

This remains fragile, however, with citizens progressively upset by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of budget-friendly lodging and trapped in low paying seasonal tasks.

The Henry Jackson Society is a diplomacy and national security think thank based in the United Kingdom.

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