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

Britain is on course to becoming a ‘2nd tier’ European country like Spain or Italy due to economic decline and a weak military that undermines its effectiveness to allies, a specialist has actually warned.

Research professor Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning 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 existing growth rates.

The stark assessment weighed that successive government failures in regulation and bring in financial investment had caused 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 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 assesses that Britain is now on track to fall back Poland in terms of per capita income by 2030, which the central European nation’s armed force will quickly exceed the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and equipment 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 return. Nations don’t come back from this,’ Dr Ibrahim told MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be sped up decrease unless we nip this in the bud and have bold leaders who have the ability to make the tough 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 speak to Archer crews from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery during a live fire variety on Rovajärvi Training Area, during Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim welcomed the federal government’s choice to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, however warned much deeper, systemic concerns threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a worldwide influential power.

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

Why WW3 is currently here … and how the UK will need to lead in America’s absence

‘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 deployment at scale.’

This is of particular issue at a time of heightened geopolitical stress, with Britain pegged to be among 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 mount a single heavy armoured brigade.’

‘This is an enormous oversight on the part of subsequent governments, not just Starmer’s issue, of stopping working to buy our military and essentially contracting out security to the United States and NATO,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting fatigue of offering the security umbrella to Europe, Europe now needs to base 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 ‘stopping working to change’ to the Trump administration’s shock to the rules-based global order, stated Dr Ibrahim.

The former consultant to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review noted in the report that in spite of the ‘weakening’ of the institutions once ‘protected’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by damaging the last vestiges of its military may and economic power.

The U.K., he stated, ‘seems to be making progressively pricey 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 in between the U.K. and Mauritius were started by the Tories in 2022, however an agreement was announced by the Labour federal government last October.

Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security believe thank alerted at the time that ‘the relocation shows worrying tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government describes as being characterised by terrific power competition’.

Require the U.K. to offer reparations for its historical function in the slave trade were revived also in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer said ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the agenda.

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 a press conference in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

Dr Ibhramin assessed 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 rockets however fail to completely envisage the risk that having no option to China’s supply chains may have on our capability to respond to military hostility.’

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

‘Without instant policy changes to reignite development, Britain will become a decreased power, reliant on more powerful allies and susceptible to foreign browbeating,’ the Diplomacy columnist stated.

‘As international financial competitors magnifies, the U.K. should decide whether to embrace a bold growth agenda or resign itself to irreparable decrease.’

Britain’s commitment to the concept of Net Zero may be admirable, but the pursuit will inhibit development and obscure tactical objectives, he cautioned.

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

‘We are a nation that has stopped working to purchase our economic, in our energy infrastructure. And we have significant resources at our disposal.’

Nuclear power, including making use of little modular reactors, could be a benefit for the British economy and energy independence.

‘But we’ve stopped working to commercialise them and obviously that’s going to take a substantial amount of time.’

Britain did present a brand-new funding design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour politicians had actually firmly insisted was essential to discovering the cash for pricey plant-building tasks.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development company, has actually been heralded for its grants for small energy-producing companies in your home, business owners have actually cautioned a broader culture of ‘risk hostility’ in the U.K. stifles 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 picture of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

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

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

‘The hazard to this order … has established partly due to the fact that of the lack of a robust will to protect it, owing in part to ponder foreign attempts to subvert the acknowledgment of the real hiding danger they pose.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim cautioned that this is not enough. He prompted 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 take up enormous amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing considerably,’ he told MailOnline.

‘You could double the NHS budget and it will actually not make much of a damage. So all of this will require fundamental reform and will take a great deal of guts from whomever is in power due to the fact that it will make them unpopular.’

The report details suggestions in extreme tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a restored focus on securing Britain’s role as a leader in modern markets, energy security, and international trade.

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

File image. Britain’s economic stagnation could see it quickly end up being a ‘second tier’ partner

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

Britain is not alone in falling behind. The Trump administration’s insistence that Europe pay for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire situation after years of slow development and decreased costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of last year that Euro location economic performance has been ‘controlled’ because around 2018, illustrating ‘diverse challenges of energy reliance, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and moving worldwide trade characteristics’.

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

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

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

SpainPoland