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

Britain is on course to ending up being a ‘2nd tier’ European country like Spain or Italy due to financial decrease and a weak armed force that weakens its usefulness to allies, a professional 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 plain assessment weighed that successive government failures in policy and drawing in investment had actually caused Britain to miss 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 latest 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 regards to per capita income by 2030, and that the main European country’s armed force will quickly surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and equipment on the present trajectory.

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

‘This is going to be sped up decline unless we nip this in the bud and have strong leaders who are able to make the tough choices 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 uses a radio to speak with 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 warned much deeper, systemic issues threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a globally prominent power.

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

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

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

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

‘This is a massive oversight on the part of subsequent governments, not just Starmer’s problem, of failing to buy our military and essentially contracting out security to the United States and NATO,’ he told MailOnline.

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

Slowed defence spending and patterns of low performance are absolutely nothing brand-new. But Britain is now also ‘stopping working to adjust’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based worldwide order, said 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 ‘protected’ by the U.S., Britain is reacting by damaging the last vestiges of its military might and financial power.

The U.K., he said, ‘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 been the source of much analysis.

Negotiations 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 move demonstrates worrying strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government refers to as being characterised by great power competition’.

Calls for the U.K. to provide reparations for its historic role in the servant trade were revived also in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a conference 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 throughout an interview in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

Dr Ibhramin examined that the U.K. appears to be acting against its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of threat.

‘We understand soldiers and rockets but stop working to completely envisage the threat that having no option to China’s supply chains might have on our ability to react to military hostility.’

He suggested a brand-new security design to ‘boost the U.K.’s tactical 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 self-reliance by means of financial investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on nuclear energy.

‘Without immediate policy modifications to reignite development, Britain will end up being a diminished power, reliant on stronger allies and susceptible to foreign browbeating,’ the Diplomacy columnist stated.

‘As international economic competitors heightens, the U.K. should decide whether to embrace a vibrant growth program or resign itself to irreparable decrease.’

Britain’s dedication to the idea of Net Zero may be admirable, however the pursuit will prevent growth and unknown strategic goals, he alerted.

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

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

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

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

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

While Innovate UK, Britain’s development company, has been declared for its grants for little energy-producing business at home, entrepreneurs have actually warned a larger culture of ‘danger aversion’ in the U.K. suppresses investment.

In 2022, earnings for the poorest 14 million individuals 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 actually regularly stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian danger’, permitting the pattern of managed decline.

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

‘The danger to this order … has actually established partly due to the fact that of the absence of a robust will to protect it, owing in part to ponder foreign efforts to overturn the acknowledgment of the real lurking threat they present.’

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

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is not enough. He urged 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, – these are essentially bodies that take up tremendous quantities of funds and they’ll just keep growing substantially,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You might 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 lot of guts from whomever is in power because it will make them undesirable.’

The report outlines recommendations in extreme tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a renewed focus on securing Britain’s function as a leader in high-tech industries, energy security, and global trade.

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

File picture. Britain’s economic stagnation might see it quickly become a ‘second tier’ partner

Boarded-up stores 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 insistence that Europe spend for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s alarming circumstance after years of slow growth and reduced spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of in 2015 that Euro location economic performance has actually been ‘controlled’ since around 2018, showing ‘complex obstacles of energy dependence, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and shifting international trade dynamics’.

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

This remains delicate, nevertheless, with locals progressively agitated by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of budget friendly lodging and caught in low paying seasonal jobs.

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

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