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Poland Set to ‘Soon 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 decrease and a weak armed force that weakens its usefulness to allies, a specialist has warned.

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

The stark assessment weighed that successive government failures in regulation and drawing in investment had actually 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 2 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, and that the central European country’s military will quickly go beyond the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and devices on the existing trajectory.

‘The concern is that once we are downgraded to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be practically difficult to return. Nations don’t return from this,’ Dr Ibrahim informed MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be sped up decline unless we nip this in the bud and have vibrant leaders who are able to make the hard 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 talk 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 government’s choice to increase defence costs to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, but warned much deeper, systemic concerns threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as an internationally prominent power.

With a weakening commercial base, Britain’s effectiveness 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, but also a smaller sized army and one that is not able to sustain deployment at scale.’

This is of particular concern at a time of heightened geopolitical tension, with Britain pegged to be amongst 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 federal governments, not just Starmer’s problem, of failing 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 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 spending and patterns of low efficiency 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 former consultant to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review kept in mind 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 may and financial power.

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

Negotiations between the U.K. and Mauritius were begun by the Tories in 2022, but an arrangement was announced by the Labour government last October.

Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security think thank warned at the time that ‘the move demonstrates worrying tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government refers to as being characterised by terrific power competitors’.

Calls for the U.K. to provide reparations for its historical function in the servant trade were revived also in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a conference of Commonwealth nations that reparations would not be on the agenda.

A Challenger 2 primary fight tank of the British forces throughout 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 throughout an interview 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 threat.

‘We understand soldiers and rockets however fail to totally develop of the danger that having no option to China’s supply chains might have on our capability to respond to military hostility.’

He recommended a brand-new security model to ‘boost the U.K.’s tactical dynamism’ based on a rethink of migratory policy and danger assessment, access to uncommon earth minerals in a market controlled by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and independence through investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on atomic energy.

‘Without immediate policy modifications to reignite growth, Britain will end up being a reduced power, reliant on stronger allies and vulnerable to foreign browbeating,’ the Foreign Policy columnist said.

‘As global economic competition intensifies, the U.K. should decide whether to accept a bold growth agenda or resign itself to irreversible decline.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation firm, has been heralded for its grants for little energy-producing companies in the house, entrepreneurs have actually cautioned a broader culture of ‘risk aversion’ in the U.K. stifles 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 picture of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

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

But the resurgence of autocracies on the world phase threats further weakening the rules-based worldwide order from which Britain ‘advantages tremendously’ as a globalised economy.

‘The threat 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 deliberate foreign efforts to overturn the recognition of the true hiding hazard they posture.’

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 up to the urgency of buying defence.

But Dr Ibrahim cautioned that this is not enough. He advised a top-down reform of ‘basically our whole state’ to bring the ossified state back to life and it.

‘Reforming the well-being state, reforming the NHS, reforming pensions – these are essentially bodies that use up tremendous amounts of funds and they’ll just keep growing considerably,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You might double the NHS budget plan and it will truly not make much of a dent. So all of this will require essential reform and will take a lot of courage from whomever is in power since it will make them undesirable.’

The report details recommendations in radical tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a restored concentrate on protecting Britain’s function as a leader in high-tech markets, energy security, and global trade.

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

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

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

Britain is not alone in falling behind. The Trump administration’s persistence that Europe spend for its own defence has cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire situation after years of sluggish development and minimized spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research evaluated at the end of last year that Euro location economic performance has actually been ‘suppressed’ given that around 2018, highlighting ‘complex obstacles of energy dependence, producing vulnerabilities, and shifting global trade dynamics’.

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

This remains delicate, nevertheless, with citizens significantly upset by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of budget-friendly accommodation and caught in low paying seasonal tasks.