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

Britain is on course to ending up being a ‘second tier’ European nation like Spain or Italy due to economic decrease and a weak military that undermines its effectiveness to allies, an expert has warned.

Research professor Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning brand-new report that the U.K. has 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 successive federal government failures in regulation and attracting financial investment had triggered Britain to lose out on the ‘industries 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 2 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 examines that Britain is now on track to fall behind Poland in regards to per capita earnings by 2030, which the main European country’s armed force will quickly exceed the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and devices on the existing trajectory.

‘The concern is that once we are devalued to a second tier middle power, it’s going to be virtually 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 vibrant leaders who have the ability to make the tough decisions right now.’

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 utilizes a radio to speak with 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 federal government’s choice to increase defence costs to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, but alerted much deeper, systemic issues threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a worldwide prominent power.

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

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

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

‘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 just Starmer’s issue, of failing to buy our military and basically contracting out 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 remained in a premium position to really lead European defence. But none of the European countries are.’

Slowed defence spending and patterns of low productivity are nothing brand-new. But Britain is now also ‘failing to adjust’ to the Trump administration’s shock to the rules-based worldwide 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 institutions when ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is reacting by hurting the last vestiges of its military might and financial power.

The U.K., he stated, ‘seems to be making progressively 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 been the source of much examination.

Negotiations in between the U.K. and Mauritius were begun by the Tories in 2022, however 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 shows fretting tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government refers to as being characterised by excellent power competitors’.

Calls for the U.K. to offer reparations for its historic role in the slave trade were rekindled likewise in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer said ahead of a conference of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the agenda.

A Challenger 2 main fight tank of the British forces throughout 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 throughout 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 danger.

‘We comprehend soldiers and missiles however fail to fully envisage the threat that having no alternative to China’s supply chains may have on our ability to react to military aggression.’

He recommended a brand-new security design to ‘enhance the U.K.’s strategic dynamism’ based on a rethink of migratory policy and risk assessment, access to uncommon 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 nuclear energy.

‘Without immediate policy modifications to reignite development, Britain will become a reduced power, reliant on stronger allies and susceptible to foreign coercion,’ the Foreign Policy writer said.

‘As worldwide economic competition intensifies, the U.K. should choose whether to welcome a vibrant growth program or resign itself to permanent decrease.’

Britain’s commitment to the idea of Net Zero might be laudable, but the pursuit will hinder growth and unknown tactical goals, he alerted.

‘I am not stating that the environment is trivial. But we simply can not manage to do this.

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

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

‘But we have actually failed to commercialise them and undoubtedly that’s going to take a significant amount of time.’

Britain did present a brand-new financing model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour political leaders had insisted was crucial to finding the money for pricey plant-building projects.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation agency, has actually been declared for its grants for small energy-producing business at home, business owners have actually alerted a wider culture of ‘risk hostility’ in the U.K. stifles financial 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 photo of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has regularly stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian danger’, enabling the pattern of managed decline.

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

‘The hazard to this order … has actually developed partly since of the lack of a robust will to protect it, owing in part to ponder foreign efforts to overturn the recognition of the real prowling threat they posture.’

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 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 welfare state, reforming the NHS, reforming pensions – these are basically bodies that use up enormous quantities of funds and they’ll simply keep growing considerably,’ he told MailOnline.

‘You could double the NHS budget plan and it will actually 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 since it will make them out of favor.’

The report outlines suggestions in extreme tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a renewed concentrate on securing Britain’s role as a leader in state-of-the-art industries, energy security, and international trade.

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

File image. Britain’s financial stagnancy could see it soon become a ‘second tier’ partner

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

is not alone in falling behind. The Trump administration’s persistence that Europe pay for its own defence has cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s alarming situation after decades of sluggish development and decreased spending.

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

There remain profound discrepancies in 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 vulnerable, nevertheless, with residents progressively upset by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of inexpensive accommodation and trapped in low paying seasonal jobs.

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

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