Britain is on course to ending up being a 'second tier' European country like Spain or Italy due to financial decline and a weak armed force that undermines its effectiveness to allies, an expert has warned.

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

The plain evaluation weighed that succeeding federal government failures in guideline and attracting investment had actually triggered 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 wrote 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 behind Poland in regards to per capita earnings by 2030, which 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 issue is that as soon as we are reduced to a 2nd tier middle power, it's going to be virtually impossible to return. Nations don't 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 are able to make the challenging decisions today.'

People pass boarded up stores 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 to Archer teams from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery during 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 warned much deeper, systemic concerns threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as an internationally influential power.

With a weakening commercial 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. predicted to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, but likewise a smaller sized army and one that is unable to sustain deployment at scale.'

This is of particular issue at a time of heightened geopolitical stress, with Britain pegged to be amongst the leading forces in Europe's quick rearmament project.

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

'This is a massive oversight on the part of subsequent governments, not just Starmer's problem, of failing to buy our military and essentially outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,' he told MailOnline.

'With the U.S. getting tiredness of 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 countries are.'

Slowed defence costs and patterns of low performance are nothing brand-new. But Britain is now also 'failing to adjust' to the Trump administration's shock to the rules-based worldwide order, stated Dr Ibrahim.

The former advisor to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review kept in mind in the report that in spite of the 'weakening' of the institutions when 'protected' by the U.S., Britain is reacting by hurting the last vestiges of its military might and financial power.

The U.K., he said, 'seems to be making progressively 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 in between the U.K. and Mauritius were started by the Tories in 2022, but an agreement was revealed by the Labour federal government last October.

Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security believe thank cautioned at the time that 'the move shows worrying strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government refers to as being characterised by great power competitors'.

Calls for the U.K. to supply reparations for its historical function in the servant trade were revived likewise in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer said 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 an interview 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 risk.

'We understand soldiers and missiles but fail to fully envisage the risk that having no option to China's supply chains may have on our capability to respond to military aggressiveness.'

He recommended a new security design to 'improve the U.K.'s strategic 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 atomic energy.

'Without immediate policy modifications to reignite development, Britain will end up being a decreased power, reliant on more powerful allies and vulnerable to foreign coercion,' the Foreign Policy columnist stated.

'As global financial competitors intensifies, the U.K. needs to choose whether to welcome a vibrant growth agenda or resign itself to permanent decline.'

Britain's dedication to the concept of Net Zero may be laudable, but the pursuit will prevent growth and odd tactical goals, he cautioned.

'I am not saying that the environment is not essential. But we simply can not manage to do this.

'We are a nation that has stopped working to buy our financial, in our energy facilities. And we have significant resources at our disposal.'

Nuclear power, consisting of making use of little modular reactors, might be a boon for the British economy and energy self-reliance.

'But we have actually stopped working to commercialise them and clearly that's going to take a considerable quantity of time.'

Britain did introduce a new funding design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour politicians had actually insisted was crucial to finding the money for costly plant-building jobs.

While Innovate UK, Britain's development firm, has been declared for its grants for little energy-producing business in your home, entrepreneurs have actually warned a broader culture of 'danger hostility' in the U.K. suppresses 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 actually regularly stopped working to acknowledge the looming 'authoritarian threat', enabling the pattern of handled decrease.

But the renewal of autocracies on the world stage risks further undermining the rules-based global order from which Britain 'benefits immensely' as a globalised economy.

'The threat to this order ... has established partially because of the absence of a robust will to defend it, owing in part to ponder foreign attempts to subvert the acknowledgment of the true lurking threat they present.'

The Trump administration's alerting to NATO allies in Europe that they will have to do their own bidding has actually gone some method towards waking Britain as much as the urgency of buying defence.

But Dr Ibrahim cautioned that this is not enough. He advised a top-down reform of 'essentially 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 basically bodies that use up tremendous quantities of funds and they'll just keep growing considerably,' he told MailOnline.

'You could double the NHS budget and it will truly not make much of a dent. So all of this will require fundamental reform and will take a lot of courage from whomever is in power due to the fact that it will make them undesirable.'

The report lays out suggestions in extreme tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a restored focus on securing Britain's function as a leader in state-of-the-art industries, energy security, and global trade.

Vladimir Putin talks with the governor of Arkhangelsk region Alexander Tsybulsky throughout their conference at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, March 11, 2025

File picture. Britain's financial stagnation might 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 spend for its own defence has cast fresh light on the Old Continent's dire situation after years of sluggish growth and minimized spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of last year that Euro area financial efficiency has been 'suppressed' given that around 2018, highlighting 'multifaceted difficulties of energy dependency, producing vulnerabilities, and shifting international trade characteristics'.

There stay profound inconsistencies in between European economies; German deindustrialisation has struck businesses hard and forced redundancies, while Spain has grown in line with its tourism-focused economy.

This stays fragile, nevertheless, with citizens increasingly upset by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of budget-friendly accommodation and caught in low paying seasonal jobs.

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

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