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

Britain is on course to becoming a ‘2nd tier’ European country like Spain or Italy due to financial decline and a weak armed force that weakens its effectiveness to allies, a professional has actually warned.

Research teacher Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning new report that the U.K. has actually been paralysed by low investment, high tax and misguided policies that might see it lose its standing as a top-tier middle power at current development rates.

The stark assessment weighed that successive federal government failures in regulation and drawing in investment had triggered Britain to lose out on the ‘markets of the future’ courted by developed economies.

‘Britain no longer has the commercial base to logistically sustain a war with a near-peer like Russia for more than two months,’ he wrote in The Henry Jackson Society’s latest 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 income by 2030, and that the main European nation’s military will quickly go beyond the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and devices on the existing trajectory.

‘The problem is that once we are reduced to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be almost difficult to return. Nations don’t 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 strong leaders who are able to make the hard choices right now.’

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

Dr Ibrahim welcomed the government’s decision to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, however cautioned much deeper, systemic problems threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a globally prominent power.

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

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

This is of particular concern at a time of increased geopolitical tension, with Britain pegged to be amongst 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 install a single heavy armoured brigade.’

‘This is an enormous oversight on the part of subsequent governments, not simply Starmer’s issue, of failing to invest in our military and basically outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,’ he informed MailOnline.

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

Slowed defence costs and patterns of low performance are nothing brand-new. But Britain is now also ‘failing to adjust’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based worldwide order, stated Dr Ibrahim.

The previous advisor to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review noted 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 may and economic power.

The U.K., he said, ‘appears to be making progressively 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 actually 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 revealed by the Labour federal 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 worrying strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government refers to as being characterised by terrific power competitors’.

Require the U.K. to supply reparations for its historic role in the slave trade were revived 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 primary battle 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 an interview in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

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

‘We understand soldiers and missiles however fail to fully envisage the risk that having no alternative to China’s supply chains might have on our capability to react to military hostility.’

He recommended a new security model to ‘boost the U.K.’s tactical dynamism’ based on a rethink of migratory policy and hazard evaluation, access to rare earth minerals in a market dominated by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and self-reliance via 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 reduced power, reliant on more powerful allies and vulnerable to foreign browbeating,’ the Foreign Policy writer stated.

‘As international economic competitors heightens, the U.K. must choose whether to accept a bold growth agenda or resign itself to irreversible decrease.’

Britain’s commitment to the concept of Net Zero may be admirable, however the pursuit will hinder growth and obscure strategic objectives, he warned.

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

‘We are a country that has actually stopped working to buy our economic, in our energy infrastructure. And we have considerable resources at our disposal.’

Nuclear power, including using small modular reactors, might be a boon for the British economy and energy independence.

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

Britain did present a new funding model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour politicians had firmly insisted was crucial to finding the money for pricey plant-building jobs.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development firm, has been heralded for its grants for small energy-producing business at home, entrepreneurs have warned a wider culture of in the U.K. suppresses 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 picture of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

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

But the revival of autocracies on the world phase risks even more weakening the rules-based global order from which Britain ‘advantages immensely’ as a globalised economy.

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

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

But Dr Ibrahim alerted that this is not enough. 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 take up immense amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing significantly,’ he told MailOnline.

‘You might double the NHS budget plan 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 guts from whomever is in power because it will make them unpopular.’

The report outlines 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 worldwide trade.

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

File photo. Britain’s financial stagnancy could 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 great in 2024

Britain is not alone in falling behind. The Trump administration’s persistence that Europe spend for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s alarming scenario after decades of slow growth and decreased costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research assessed at the end of in 2015 that Euro area financial performance has been ‘suppressed’ because around 2018, highlighting ‘multifaceted challenges of energy dependency, producing vulnerabilities, and shifting global trade characteristics’.

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

This remains vulnerable, however, with homeowners increasingly upset by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of inexpensive lodging and caught in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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