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

Britain is on course to becoming a ‘2nd tier’ European nation like Spain or Italy due to economic decline and a weak armed force that weakens its effectiveness 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 might see it lose its standing as a top-tier middle power at present development rates.

The plain assessment weighed that successive federal government failures in policy and attracting financial investment had caused Britain to miss out on out on the ‘industries 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 2 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 evaluates that Britain is now on track to fall behind Poland in regards to per capita earnings by 2030, and that the central European country’s armed force will quickly surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and equipment on the existing trajectory.

‘The problem is that once we are reduced to a second tier middle power, it’s going to be virtually impossible to get back. Nations do not return 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 choices today.’

People pass boarded up stores 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 range on Rovajärvi Training Area, throughout Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim invited the federal government’s decision to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, but cautioned much deeper, systemic issues threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as an internationally influential power.

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

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

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

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

‘This is a massive oversight on the part of subsequent federal governments, not simply Starmer’s issue, of failing to purchase our military and basically outsourcing 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 has 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 costs and patterns of low performance are nothing new. But Britain is now also ‘stopping working to to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based worldwide order, stated Dr Ibrahim.

The previous consultant to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review kept in mind in the report that in spite of the ‘weakening’ of the organizations once ‘protected’ by the U.S., Britain is reacting by hurting the last vestiges of its military may and financial power.

The U.K., he said, ‘appears 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 between the U.K. and Mauritius were started by the Tories in 2022, but an arrangement was revealed by the Labour government last October.

Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security think thank alerted at the time that ‘the relocation demonstrates stressing strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government describes as being characterised by excellent power competitors’.

Calls for the U.K. to provide reparations for its historical role in the servant trade were revived also in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth nations that reparations would not be on the program.

A Challenger 2 primary fight 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 a press conference in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

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

‘We comprehend soldiers and rockets but fail to fully conceive of the risk that having no option to China’s supply chains may have on our ability to react to military aggressiveness.’

He suggested a new security model to ‘improve the U.K.’s tactical dynamism’ based on a rethink of migratory policy and threat assessment, access to unusual earth minerals in a market dominated by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and independence through 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 diminished power, reliant on more powerful allies and susceptible to foreign browbeating,’ the Foreign Policy writer said.

‘As global financial competition heightens, the U.K. should decide whether to accept a bold development program or resign itself to irreparable decrease.’

Britain’s dedication to the idea of Net Zero may be laudable, however the pursuit will hinder development and odd tactical goals, he warned.

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

‘We are a nation that has failed to invest in our financial, 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 self-reliance.

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

Britain did introduce a brand-new financing model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour politicians had firmly insisted was key to finding the cash for expensive plant-building tasks.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation agency, has actually been heralded 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 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 consistently failed to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian threat’, allowing the pattern of handled decrease.

But the renewal of autocracies on the world stage dangers further weakening the rules-based worldwide order from which Britain ‘advantages enormously’ as a globalised economy.

‘The danger to this order … has developed partially since of the lack of a robust will to safeguard it, owing in part to ponder foreign efforts to subvert the recognition of the real hiding threat they position.’

The Trump administration’s cautioning 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 buying defence.

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is inadequate. He prompted a top-down reform of ‘basically our entire 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 tremendous quantities of funds and they’ll simply keep growing significantly,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You could double the NHS spending plan and it will actually not make much of a damage. So all of this will need basic reform and will take a lot of courage from whomever is in power due to the fact that it will make them out of favor.’

The report lays out suggestions in radical tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a renewed focus on securing Britain’s role as a leader in state-of-the-art industries, energy security, and international 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 photo. Britain’s financial stagnation might see it quickly end up being a ‘second tier’ partner

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

Britain is not alone in falling back. The Trump administration’s insistence that Europe spend for its own defence has cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire situation after decades of sluggish growth and decreased spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research assessed at the end of last year that Euro area financial performance has been ‘suppressed’ because around 2018, illustrating ‘multifaceted challenges of energy dependence, producing vulnerabilities, and moving international trade dynamics’.

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

This stays vulnerable, however, with residents significantly agitated by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of inexpensive lodging and trapped in low paying seasonal jobs.