Britain is on course to becoming a '2nd tier' European country like Spain or Italy due to financial decline and a weak armed force that weakens its usefulness to allies, a specialist has actually alerted.
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Research teacher 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 misguided policies that might see it lose its standing as a top-tier middle power at current growth rates.

The stark assessment weighed that successive federal government failures in policy and bring in financial investment had triggered Britain to lose out on the 'industries 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 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 assesses that Britain is now on track to fall back Poland in terms of per capita earnings by 2030, which the central European nation's military will quickly exceed the U.K.'s along lines of both manpower and equipment on the present trajectory.

'The problem is that when we are downgraded to a 2nd tier middle power, it's going to be practically impossible to get back. 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 have the ability to make the challenging choices 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 utilizes a radio to talk to Archer crews from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery throughout a live fire range on Rovajärvi Training Area, during Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim welcomed the federal government's choice to increase defence costs to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, but alerted much deeper, systemic problems threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as an internationally prominent power.

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

Why WW3 is currently here ... and how the UK will need to lead in America's absence

'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 concern at a time of increased geopolitical tension, with Britain pegged to be among the leading forces in Europe's fast rearmament job.

'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 federal governments, not simply Starmer's issue, of stopping working 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 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 in fact lead European defence. But none of the European countries are.'

Slowed defence spending and patterns of low performance are absolutely nothing brand-new. But Britain is now also 'failing to change' to the Trump administration's jolt to the rules-based global order, stated Dr Ibrahim.

The previous advisor to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review kept in mind in the report that in spite of the 'weakening' of the organizations when 'protected' by the U.S., Britain is responding by damaging the last vestiges of its military may and economic power.

The U.K., he said, 'seems to be making significantly 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 analysis.

Negotiations between the U.K. and Mauritius were begun by the Tories in 2022, however an arrangement was revealed by the Labour government last October.

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

Require the U.K. to supply reparations for its historical role in the slave trade were revived 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.

A Challenger 2 main fight 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 throughout an interview in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

Dr Ibhramin examined that the U.K. seems to be acting versus its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of threat.

'We understand soldiers and rockets however fail to totally envisage the risk that having no option to China's supply chains might have on our ability to respond to military aggressiveness.'

He suggested a brand-new security design to 'boost the U.K.'s strategic dynamism' based upon a rethink of migratory policy and risk evaluation, access to unusual earth minerals in a market dominated by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and self-reliance by means of investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on nuclear energy.

'Without instant policy modifications to reignite development, Britain will end up being a reduced power, reliant on more powerful allies and vulnerable to foreign coercion,' the Foreign Policy writer said.

'As international economic competition heightens, the U.K. must choose whether to embrace a strong development program or resign itself to irreparable decrease.'

Britain's dedication to the idea of Net Zero might be admirable, however the pursuit will hinder growth and odd tactical objectives, he cautioned.

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

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

Nuclear power, including using little modular reactors, could be a boon for the British economy and energy self-reliance.

'But we've failed to commercialise them and clearly that's going to take a substantial quantity of time.'

Britain did present a brand-new funding design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists consisting of Labour political leaders had actually insisted was crucial to discovering the cash for expensive plant-building projects.

While Innovate UK, Britain's development company, has been heralded for its grants for small energy-producing business in the house, business owners have actually warned a wider culture of 'risk hostility' in the U.K. stifles 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 consistently failed to acknowledge the looming 'authoritarian hazard', enabling the pattern of managed decline.

But the revival of autocracies on the world phase dangers further undermining the rules-based worldwide order from which Britain 'benefits enormously' as a globalised economy.

'The risk to this order ... has developed partly due to the fact that of the absence of a robust will to protect it, owing in part to deliberate foreign attempts to overturn the acknowledgment of the true hiding threat they present.'

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

But Dr Ibrahim alerted that this is insufficient. He prompted a top-down reform of 'basically our whole state' to bring the ossified state back to life and sustain it.

'Reforming the well-being state, reforming the NHS, reforming pensions - these are essentially bodies that take up immense quantities of funds and they'll just keep growing significantly,' he informed MailOnline.

'You might double the NHS budget and it will actually not make much of a dent. So all of this will require essential reform and will take a great deal of guts from whomever is in power since it will make them out of favor.'

The report outlines recommendations in radical tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a renewed concentrate on protecting Britain's function as a leader in modern industries, energy security, and worldwide trade.

Vladimir Putin speaks to the governor of Arkhangelsk region Alexander Tsybulsky during their conference at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, March 11, 2025

File photo. Britain's financial stagnancy could see it quickly end up being a '2nd tier' partner

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

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

The Centre for Economic Policy Research assessed at the end of last year that Euro area economic performance has been 'suppressed' given that around 2018, showing 'multifaceted difficulties of energy dependence, producing vulnerabilities, and moving worldwide trade dynamics'.

There stay profound disparities between European economies