Britain is on course to becoming a 'second tier' European nation like Spain or Italy due to financial decrease and a weak armed force that undermines its usefulness to allies, a professional has cautioned.

Research teacher 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 growth rates.

The stark evaluation weighed that successive federal government failures in policy and attracting financial investment had triggered Britain to miss out on the 'industries of the future' courted by established 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 central European nation's military will soon surpass the U.K.'s along lines of both workforce and equipment on the present trajectory.

'The problem is that as soon as we are reduced to a second tier middle power, it's going to be practically impossible to return. Nations don't come back from this,' Dr Ibrahim informed MailOnline today.

'This is going to be sped up decrease unless we nip this in the bud and have vibrant leaders who are able to make the difficult decisions today.'

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 uses a radio to talk to Archer teams from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery throughout a live fire range 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 concerns threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a worldwide influential power.

With a weakening industrial base, Britain's usefulness to its allies is now back even second-tier European powers', he warned.

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'Not just is the U.K. anticipated to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, but also a smaller sized army and one that is not able to sustain deployment at scale.'

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

'There are 230 brigades in Ukraine right now, Russian and Ukrainian. Not a single European nation 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 buy our military and essentially outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,' he told MailOnline.

'With the U.S. getting fatigue of offering 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 in fact lead European defence. But none of the European countries are.'

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

The previous advisor to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review noted in the report that in spite of the 'weakening' of the organizations as soon as 'protected' by the U.S., Britain is responding by harming the last vestiges of its military might and financial power.

The U.K., he said, 'appears 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 scrutiny.

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

Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security believe thank warned at the time that 'the move demonstrates fretting strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government explains as being characterised by fantastic power competitors'.

Calls for the U.K. to offer 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 nations that reparations would not be on the program.

An Opposition 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 against its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of threat.

'We understand soldiers and rockets but fail to fully envisage the threat that having no alternative to China's supply chains may have on our ability to respond to military hostility.'

He recommended a brand-new security design to 'improve the U.K.'s strategic dynamism' based upon a rethink of migratory policy and risk assessment, access to uncommon earth minerals in a market controlled by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and independence 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 diminished power, reliant on stronger allies and susceptible to foreign coercion,' the Diplomacy columnist stated.

'As worldwide financial competitors intensifies, the U.K. should decide whether to embrace a strong growth program or resign itself to permanent decline.'

Britain's commitment to the concept of Net Zero might be laudable, but the pursuit will prevent growth and obscure tactical goals, he alerted.

'I am not saying that the environment is not crucial. But we just can not afford to do this.

'We are a country that has stopped working to invest in our financial, in our energy infrastructure. And we have considerable resources at our disposal.'

Nuclear power, including using little modular reactors, could be an advantage for the British economy and energy independence.

'But we have actually stopped working to commercialise them and undoubtedly that's going to take a significant amount of time.'

Britain did present a new funding model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour politicians had actually firmly insisted was crucial to discovering the cash for costly plant-building tasks.

While Innovate UK, Britain's development company, has actually been declared for its grants for little energy-producing companies in your home, business owners have actually cautioned a wider culture of 'danger hostility' in the U.K. stifles financial investment.

In 2022, incomes for the poorest 14 million individuals 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 consistently failed to acknowledge the looming 'authoritarian risk', permitting the pattern of managed decrease.

But the resurgence of autocracies on the world phase threats even more undermining the rules-based global order from which Britain 'benefits enormously' as a globalised economy.

'The threat to this order ... has actually developed partially due to the fact that of the absence of a robust will to safeguard it, owing in part to deliberate foreign efforts to overturn the recognition of the true prowling threat they present.'

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

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is inadequate. 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 basically bodies that use up enormous amounts of funds and they'll simply keep growing substantially,' he told MailOnline.

'You might double the NHS spending plan and it will truly not make much of a damage. So all of this will need essential reform and will take a great deal of nerve from whomever is in power because it will make them unpopular.'

The report describes suggestions in radical tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a renewed concentrate on protecting Britain's function as a leader in state-of-the-art markets, energy security, and worldwide trade.

Vladimir Putin consults with 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 stagnancy could 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 excellent in 2024

Britain is not alone in falling behind. The Trump administration's insistence that Europe spend for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent's alarming situation after decades of slow development and minimized spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research evaluated at the end of last year that Euro location financial performance has actually been 'suppressed' because around 2018, highlighting 'multifaceted difficulties of energy dependency, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and moving worldwide trade characteristics'.

There remain profound disparities between European economies; German deindustrialisation has hit services difficult and forced redundancies, while Spain has grown in line with its tourism-focused economy.

This stays fragile, nevertheless, with locals progressively upset by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of budget-friendly lodging and trapped in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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