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 decline and a weak armed force that weakens its usefulness to allies, a specialist has cautioned.

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

The plain assessment weighed that succeeding federal government failures in policy and bring in investment had actually caused Britain to lose out on the ‘markets of the future’ courted by established 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 latest report, Strategic Prosperity: The Case for Economic Growth as a National Security Priority.

The report examines that Britain is now on track to fall behind Poland in terms of per capita income by 2030, which the main European nation’s military will quickly go beyond the U.K.’s along lines of both manpower and equipment on the existing trajectory.

‘The concern is that as soon as we are devalued to a second tier middle power, it’s going to be almost impossible to return. Nations don’t return from this,’ Dr Ibrahim informed MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be accelerated decline unless we nip this in the bud and have bold leaders who are able to make the hard decisions right now.’

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 utilizes a radio to speak with Archer crews from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery during a live fire range on Rovajärvi Training Area, during Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim invited the government’s decision to increase defence costs 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 prominent power.

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

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

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

‘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 huge oversight on the part of subsequent governments, not simply Starmer’s problem, of stopping working to purchase our military and basically outsourcing 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 needs 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 nations are.’

Slowed defence spending and patterns of low performance are nothing new. But Britain is now likewise ‘failing 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 ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by damaging the last vestiges of its military might and financial power.

The U.K., he stated, ‘seems to be making progressively 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 scrutiny.

Negotiations between the U.K. and Mauritius were started by the Tories in 2022, however an arrangement was announced by the Labour 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 stressing strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government refers to as being characterised by excellent power competition’.

Calls for the U.K. to offer reparations for its historic function in the slave trade were revived likewise in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth nations that reparations would not be on the program.

A Challenger 2 main fight 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 evaluated 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 missiles but stop working to fully envisage the threat that having no alternative to China’s supply chains might have on our ability to react to military aggressiveness.’

He recommended a new security model to ‘boost 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 via investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on nuclear energy.

‘Without immediate policy changes to reignite growth, Britain will become a decreased power, reliant on more powerful allies and susceptible to foreign browbeating,’ the Foreign Policy writer said.

‘As global economic competition intensifies, the U.K. needs to choose whether to accept a vibrant growth program or resign itself to irreversible decline.’

Britain’s commitment to the concept of Net Zero might be laudable, but the pursuit will inhibit development and odd tactical goals, he warned.

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

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

Nuclear power, consisting of making use of small modular reactors, could be an advantage for the British economy and energy independence.

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

Britain did introduce a new financing design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour political leaders had actually insisted was crucial to finding the cash for costly plant-building projects.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation agency, has been declared for its grants for small energy-producing companies in the house, entrepreneurs have alerted a broader culture of ‘threat hostility’ in the U.K. stifles investment.

In 2022, earnings 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 hazard’, permitting the trend of handled decline.

But the revival of autocracies on the world phase threats further undermining the rules-based global order from which Britain ‘benefits immensely’ as a globalised economy.

‘The threat to this order … has developed partially because of the lack of a robust will to defend it, owing in part to ponder foreign efforts to subvert the acknowledgment of the real hiding danger they posture.’

The Trump administration’s alerting 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 urgency of buying defence.

But Dr Ibrahim alerted that this is insufficient. He advised a top-down reform of ‘basically our whole 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 use up enormous amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing substantially,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You could double the NHS budget plan and it will truly not make much of a dent. So all of this will need fundamental reform and will take a lot of guts from whomever is in power because it will make them out of favor.’

The report lays out recommendations in extreme tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a renewed concentrate on protecting Britain’s role as a leader in state-of-the-art markets, energy security, and worldwide trade.

Vladimir Putin talks to the governor of Arkhangelsk area Alexander Tsybulsky throughout their meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, March 11, 2025

File picture. Britain’s economic stagnancy could see it quickly become 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 back. The Trump administration’s insistence that Europe spend for its own defence has cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s alarming circumstance after decades of slow growth and minimized costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research assessed at the end of in 2015 that Euro location financial efficiency has been ‘suppressed’ because around 2018, illustrating ‘diverse difficulties of energy dependence, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and shifting global trade dynamics’.

There stay extensive discrepancies in between European economies; German deindustrialisation has hit organizations difficult and forced redundancies, while Spain has grown in line with its tourism-focused economy.

This remains delicate, however, with homeowners significantly upset by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of economical lodging and trapped in low paying seasonal jobs.

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

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