29sixservices

About Us

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

Britain is on course to ending up being a ‘2nd tier’ European nation like Spain or Italy due to economic decline and a weak armed force that undermines its usefulness to allies, a professional has alerted.

Research professor 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 development rates.

The stark evaluation weighed that succeeding federal government failures in guideline and drawing in investment had actually caused Britain to miss 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 two months,’ he wrote 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 regards to per capita earnings by 2030, and that the central European nation’s military will soon exceed the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and devices on the existing trajectory.

‘The concern is that as soon as we are downgraded to a second tier middle power, it’s going to be practically difficult to return. Nations don’t come back from this,’ Dr Ibrahim told MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be sped up decrease unless we nip this in the bud and have strong leaders who have the ability to make the challenging 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 utilizes a radio to speak to Archer teams from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery throughout a live fire variety on Rovajärvi Training Area, throughout Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim welcomed the federal government’s choice to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, however alerted much deeper, systemic problems 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.

Why WW3 is already here … and how the UK will need to lead in America’s lack

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

This is of particular issue at a time of heightened geopolitical tension, with Britain pegged to be among the leading forces in Europe’s rapid 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 governments, not simply Starmer’s problem, of failing to purchase our military and essentially contracting out security to the United States and NATO,’ he told MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting fatigue of supplying the security umbrella to Europe, Europe now has to stand on its own and the U.K. would have remained in a premium position to actually lead European defence. But none of the European nations are.’

Slowed defence costs and patterns of low efficiency are nothing brand-new. But Britain is now likewise ‘failing to change’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based global order, stated Dr Ibrahim.

The former advisor to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review noted in the report that in spite of the ‘weakening’ of the organizations once ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by hurting the last vestiges of its military may and financial 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 analysis.

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

Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security believe thank warned at the time that ‘the move shows worrying strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government describes as being characterised by excellent power competitors’.

Require the U.K. to supply reparations for its historical role in the servant trade were revived also in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a conference of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the program.

An Opposition 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 throughout a press conference in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

Dr 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 missiles however fail to fully develop of the risk that having no alternative to China’s supply chains may have on our ability to respond to military hostility.’

He suggested a new security design to ‘boost the U.K.’s tactical dynamism’ based upon a rethink of migratory policy and danger evaluation, access to unusual earth minerals in a market dominated by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and independence through financial investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on atomic energy.

‘Without instant policy modifications to reignite development, Britain will become a decreased power, reliant on stronger allies and vulnerable to foreign browbeating,’ the Foreign Policy columnist said.

‘As worldwide economic competition intensifies, the U.K. needs to decide whether to welcome a vibrant growth agenda or resign itself to permanent decrease.’

Britain’s commitment to the concept of Net Zero may be laudable, but the pursuit will inhibit growth and unknown strategic goals, he alerted.

‘I am not stating that the environment is not important. But we merely can not pay for to do this.

‘We are a nation that has failed to purchase our financial, in our energy facilities. And we have significant resources at our disposal.’

Nuclear power, consisting of using small modular reactors, could be an advantage for the British economy and energy self-reliance.

‘But we’ve stopped working to commercialise them and clearly that’s going to take a substantial amount of time.’

Britain did introduce a new funding model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour politicians had actually firmly insisted was key to finding the cash for pricey plant-building tasks.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation company, has actually been declared for its grants for little energy-producing companies in your home, business owners have warned a wider culture of ‘danger aversion’ 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 image of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has actually regularly stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian hazard’, allowing the pattern of handled decrease.

But the resurgence of autocracies on the world phase threats even more weakening the rules-based international order from which Britain ‘benefits immensely’ as a globalised economy.

‘The hazard to this order … has actually established partially since of the absence of a robust will to safeguard it, owing in part to deliberate foreign attempts to subvert the recognition of the true hiding danger 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 method towards waking Britain up to the urgency of purchasing defence.

But Dr Ibrahim alerted that this is insufficient. He urged a top-down reform of ‘essentially 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 essentially bodies that use up immense amounts of funds and they’ll just keep growing substantially,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘You could double the NHS budget plan and it will actually not make much of a damage. So all of this will need essential reform and will take a great deal of courage from whomever is in power because it will make them out of favor.’

The report describes suggestions in radical tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a restored concentrate on securing Britain’s role as a leader in modern industries, energy security, and global trade.

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

File image. Britain’s economic stagnancy could see it quickly end up being a ‘second tier’ partner

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

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

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of in 2015 that Euro area financial performance has been ‘subdued’ since around 2018, highlighting ‘complex difficulties of energy dependence, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and moving worldwide trade dynamics’.

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

This stays delicate, however, with citizens significantly upset by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of budget friendly accommodation and trapped in low paying seasonal jobs.

The Henry Jackson Society is a foreign policy and nationwide security believe thank based in the UK.

SpainPoland