Poland Set to ‘Soon Overtake Britain in Military Strength And Income’
Britain is on course to becoming a ‘2nd tier’ European country like Spain or Italy due to financial decline and a weak armed force that undermines its usefulness to allies, a professional has cautioned.
Research professor Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning new report that the U.K. has been paralysed by low financial investment, high tax and misguided 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 policy and attracting investment had caused Britain to miss out on out on the ‘industries 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 wrote in The Henry Jackson Society’s most current report, Strategic Prosperity: The Case for Economic Growth as a National Security Priority.
The report evaluates that Britain is now on track to fall back Poland in terms of per capita income by 2030, which the central European country’s armed force will soon surpass the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and equipment on the present trajectory.
‘The problem is that once we are devalued to a second tier middle power, it’s going to be practically impossible to return. Nations do not 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 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, throughout Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland
Dr Ibrahim welcomed the government’s decision to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, but warned much deeper, systemic problems 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. forecasted to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, however also a smaller army and one that is not able to sustain release at scale.’
This is of particular concern at a time of increased geopolitical tension, 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 install a single heavy armoured brigade.’
‘This is a massive oversight on the part of subsequent federal governments, not just Starmer’s problem, of failing to invest in our military and basically contracting out security to the United States and NATO,’ he told MailOnline.
‘With the U.S. getting fatigue of providing 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 nations are.’
Slowed defence costs and patterns of low performance are nothing new. But Britain is now also ‘stopping working to change’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based global 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 organizations when ‘protected’ by the U.S., Britain is reacting by damaging the last vestiges of its military may and economic power.
The U.K., he said, ‘seems to be making significantly costly gestures’ like the ₤ 9bn handover of the tactical 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 examination.
Negotiations between the U.K. and Mauritius were started 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 alerted at the time that ‘the relocation demonstrates worrying strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government refers to as being characterised by terrific power competitors’.
Require the U.K. to offer reparations for its historical function in the servant trade were rekindled likewise in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer said ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth nations that reparations would not be on the agenda.
An Opposition 2 primary 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 during a press conference in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025
Dr Ibhramin assessed that the U.K. seems to be acting versus its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of threat.
‘We comprehend soldiers and rockets but stop working to totally develop of the risk that having no option to China’s supply chains might have on our capability to respond to military hostility.’
He recommended a new security design to ‘improve the U.K.’s strategic dynamism’ based on a rethink of migratory policy and danger evaluation, access to unusual 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 atomic energy.
‘Without instant policy changes to reignite growth, Britain will become a decreased power, reliant on more powerful allies and vulnerable to foreign browbeating,’ the Foreign Policy columnist said.
‘As worldwide economic competition intensifies, the U.K. should choose whether to embrace a strong development agenda or resign itself to irreversible decrease.’
Britain’s dedication to the concept of Net Zero may be laudable, but the pursuit will hinder development and obscure tactical goals, he cautioned.
‘I am not stating that the environment is not crucial. But we just can not manage to do this.
‘We are a country that has stopped working to invest in our financial, in our energy facilities. And we have considerable resources at our disposal.’
Nuclear power, consisting of the use of little modular reactors, could be an advantage for the British economy and energy self-reliance.
‘But we’ve failed to commercialise them and clearly that’s going to take a considerable 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 key to discovering the cash for expensive plant-building projects.
While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation agency, has actually been heralded for its grants for little energy-producing companies in the house, business owners have actually cautioned a wider culture of ‘risk hostility’ 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 photo of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands
Britain has actually regularly failed to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian threat’, enabling the pattern of handled decline.
But the renewal of autocracies on the world phase risks further weakening the rules-based international order from which Britain ‘advantages immensely’ as a globalised economy.
‘The hazard to this order … has actually established partly because of the lack of a robust will to defend it, owing in part to ponder foreign attempts to subvert the acknowledgment of the true hiding threat they posture.’
The Trump administration’s cautioning to NATO allies in Europe that they will need to do their own bidding has actually gone some method towards waking Britain as much as the seriousness of buying defence.
But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is inadequate. He advised a top-down reform of ‘basically our whole 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 use up enormous of funds and they’ll just keep growing considerably,’ he told MailOnline.
‘You could double the NHS spending plan and it will actually not make much of a damage. So all of this will require fundamental reform and will take a lot of nerve from whomever is in power because it will make them unpopular.’
The report details recommendations in extreme tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a restored concentrate on securing Britain’s function as a leader in state-of-the-art markets, energy security, and global trade.
Vladimir Putin speaks to the governor of Arkhangelsk region Alexander Tsybulsky during their conference at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, March 11, 2025
File image. Britain’s financial stagnation might see it soon end up being a ‘second tier’ partner
Boarded-up shops in Blackpool as more than 13,000 stores closed their doors for good 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 alarming circumstance after years of sluggish growth and minimized costs.
The Centre for Economic Policy Research evaluated at the end of last year that Euro area financial performance has actually been ‘suppressed’ because around 2018, showing ‘complex challenges of energy reliance, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and shifting global trade characteristics’.
There stay extensive disparities in between European economies; German deindustrialisation has hit companies tough and forced redundancies, while Spain has grown in line with its tourism-focused economy.
This stays delicate, however, with residents increasingly upset by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of economical lodging and caught in low paying seasonal tasks.
The Henry Jackson Society is a foreign policy and nationwide security think thank based in the UK.
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