Britain is on course to becoming a 'second tier' European country like Spain or Italy due to economic decline and a weak armed force that weakens its usefulness to allies, an expert has .

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

The stark evaluation weighed that succeeding government failures in guideline and drawing in investment had actually triggered 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 most current report, Strategic Prosperity: The Case for Economic Growth as a National Security Priority.

The report examines that Britain is now on track to fall back Poland in terms of per capita earnings by 2030, and that the main European country's military will soon exceed the U.K.'s along lines of both workforce and equipment on the present trajectory.

'The problem 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 accelerated decrease unless we nip this in the bud and have bold leaders who have the ability to make the difficult 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 during a live fire range on Rovajärvi Training Area, during Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim welcomed the government's choice to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, however 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 cautioned.

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'Not only is the U.K. forecasted to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, but likewise a smaller sized army and one that is unable to sustain implementation at scale.'

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

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

'This is a huge oversight on the part of subsequent federal governments, not simply Starmer's problem, of failing to invest in our military and basically outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,' he told MailOnline.

'With the U.S. getting tiredness of providing the security umbrella to Europe, Europe now needs to base on its own and the U.K. would have remained in a premium position to really lead European defence. But none of the European nations are.'

Slowed defence costs and patterns of low efficiency are absolutely nothing brand-new. But Britain is now also 'failing to change' to the Trump administration's shock to the rules-based international 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 organizations once 'protected' by the U.S., Britain is responding by damaging the last vestiges of its military might and economic power.

The U.K., he said, 'appears to be making significantly 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 actually been the source of much analysis.

Negotiations in 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 warned at the time that 'the relocation demonstrates worrying strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government refers to as being characterised by fantastic power competition'.

Calls for the U.K. to supply reparations for its historic role in the slave trade were rekindled likewise in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer said ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the program.

A Challenger 2 primary battle tank of the British forces during 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 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 danger.

'We understand soldiers and missiles however stop working to totally conceive of the risk that having no option to China's supply chains might have on our ability to respond to military aggressiveness.'

He recommended a brand-new security model to 'boost the U.K.'s strategic dynamism' based on a rethink of migratory policy and hazard evaluation, access to rare earth minerals in a market controlled by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and self-reliance via financial investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on nuclear energy.

'Without immediate policy changes to reignite development, Britain will end up being a diminished power, reliant on more powerful allies and susceptible to foreign browbeating,' the Foreign Policy columnist stated.

'As international economic competition heightens, the U.K. needs to decide whether to accept a bold growth program or resign itself to irreversible decline.'

Britain's dedication to the concept of Net Zero might be admirable, but the pursuit will hinder development and odd tactical objectives, he alerted.

'I am not stating that the environment is trivial. But we just can not pay for to do this.

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

Nuclear power, consisting of using little modular reactors, could be a benefit for the British economy and energy independence.

'But we have actually failed to commercialise them and undoubtedly that's going to take a substantial amount of time.'

Britain did present a new financing design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour political leaders had insisted was key to finding the cash for expensive plant-building tasks.

While Innovate UK, Britain's development agency, has been heralded for its grants for small energy-producing business in the house, business owners have actually cautioned a wider culture of 'threat hostility' in the U.K. stifles 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 image of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has regularly failed to acknowledge the looming 'authoritarian risk', allowing the trend of managed decline.

But the resurgence of autocracies on the world phase dangers further weakening the rules-based global order from which Britain 'advantages tremendously' as a globalised economy.

'The risk to this order ... has actually established partly due to the fact that of the lack of a robust will to safeguard it, owing in part to ponder foreign attempts to overturn the recognition of the real prowling threat they posture.'

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

But Dr Ibrahim alerted that this is insufficient. He prompted a top-down reform of 'basically our entire 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 take up immense quantities of funds and they'll simply keep growing substantially,' he informed MailOnline.

'You could double the NHS budget and it will really not make much of a damage. So all of this will need fundamental reform and will take a lot of courage from whomever is in power since it will make them unpopular.'

The report lays out suggestions in radical tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a renewed concentrate on securing Britain's function as a leader in high-tech markets, energy security, and international trade.

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

File image. Britain's financial stagnancy could see it soon become a '2nd tier' partner

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

Britain is not alone in falling back. The Trump administration's insistence that Europe pay for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent's alarming situation after decades of sluggish growth and decreased spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of in 2015 that Euro location financial efficiency has been 'controlled' since around 2018, illustrating 'diverse difficulties of energy reliance, making vulnerabilities, and moving international trade dynamics'.

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

This remains vulnerable, however, with citizens progressively agitated by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of cost effective lodging and caught in low paying seasonal jobs.

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

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