Britain is on course to becoming a '2nd tier' European country like Spain or Italy due to economic decrease and a weak armed force that weakens its effectiveness to allies, a specialist has actually warned.

Research teacher Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning brand-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 existing growth rates.

The plain assessment weighed that successive government failures in regulation and attracting financial investment had caused Britain to lose 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 2 months,' he composed in The Henry Jackson Society's latest report, Strategic Prosperity: The Case for Economic Growth as a National Security Priority.

The report evaluates that Britain is now on track to fall back Poland in terms of per capita income by 2030, and that the main European country's armed force will quickly exceed the U.K.'s along lines of both workforce and devices on the existing trajectory.

'The concern is that when we are devalued to a 2nd tier middle power, it's going to be practically difficult to return. Nations do not return from this,' Dr Ibrahim told 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 tough choices right now.'

People pass boarded up shops 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 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 costs to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, however cautioned much deeper, systemic problems threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as a globally influential power.

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

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'Not just is the U.K. forecasted 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 particular concern at a time of heightened geopolitical tension, with Britain pegged to be among the leading forces in Europe's rapid rearmament task.

'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 buy our military and essentially outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,' he informed MailOnline.

'With the U.S. getting tiredness of offering the security umbrella to Europe, Europe now needs to base on its own and the U.K. would have been in a premium position to really lead European defence. But none of the European nations 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 noted in the report that in spite of the 'weakening' of the institutions once 'protected' by the U.S., Britain is reacting by hurting the last vestiges of its military may and economic power.

The U.K., he stated, 'appears to be making significantly pricey 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 scrutiny.

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

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

Require the U.K. to provide reparations for its historic function in the slave trade were rekindled also in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer said ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth nations that reparations would not be on the agenda.

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 an interview in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

Dr Ibhramin evaluated that the U.K. seems to be acting against its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of danger.

'We understand soldiers and missiles but stop working to completely envisage the danger that having no option to China's supply chains might have on our capability to react to military hostility.'

He suggested a brand-new security model to 'improve the U.K.'s strategic dynamism' based on a rethink of migratory policy and hazard evaluation, access to uncommon earth minerals in a market controlled 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 atomic energy.

'Without instant policy changes to reignite development, Britain will become a decreased power, reliant on more powerful allies and vulnerable to foreign browbeating,' the Foreign Policy writer said.

'As international financial competition intensifies, the U.K. should decide whether to welcome a bold growth agenda or resign itself to permanent decline.'

Britain's commitment to the concept of Net Zero might be admirable, but the pursuit will prevent growth and obscure strategic objectives, he warned.

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

'We are a country that has stopped working to purchase our economic, in our energy infrastructure. And we have significant resources at our disposal.'

Nuclear power, consisting of the use of small modular reactors, might be a benefit for the British economy and energy independence.

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

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

While Innovate UK, Britain's development agency, has been declared for its grants for little energy-producing companies in your home, business owners have actually alerted a broader culture of 'risk hostility' in the U.K. suppresses 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 photo of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

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

But the revival of autocracies on the world phase threats even more weakening the rules-based international order from which Britain 'advantages immensely' as a globalised economy.

'The hazard to this order ... has established partially due to the fact that of the absence of a robust will to protect it, owing in part to ponder foreign attempts to overturn the recognition of the true prowling threat they present.'

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

But Dr Ibrahim alerted that this is insufficient. He advised a top-down reform of 'basically 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 basically bodies that take up tremendous amounts of funds and they'll just keep growing substantially,' he informed MailOnline.

'You might double the NHS spending plan and it will actually not make much of a damage. So all of this will require fundamental reform and will take a lot of guts from whomever is in power due to the fact that it will make them out of favor.'

The report lays out recommendations in extreme tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a renewed focus on protecting Britain's function as a leader in high-tech industries, energy security, and global trade.

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

File picture. Britain's financial stagnancy might see it soon become a 'second tier' partner

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

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

The Centre for Economic Policy Research evaluated at the end of in 2015 that Euro location economic performance has actually been 'subdued' since around 2018, illustrating 'complex challenges of energy dependency, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and shifting worldwide trade characteristics'.

There remain extensive discrepancies in between European economies