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Britain is on course to becoming a 'second tier' European nation like Spain or Italy due to economic decrease and a weak military that weakens its usefulness to allies, a specialist has actually cautioned.

Research professor 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 present growth rates.

The stark assessment weighed that successive federal government failures in policy and drawing in financial investment had actually caused Britain to lose out on the 'markets 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 composed 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 behind Poland in terms of per capita income by 2030, which the central European country's military will soon surpass the U.K.'s along lines of both manpower and devices on the current trajectory.

'The issue is that once we are devalued to a 2nd tier middle power, it's going to be virtually difficult to get back. Nations don't return from this,' Dr Ibrahim informed MailOnline today.

'This is going to be sped up decrease 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 uses a radio to talk to Archer teams from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery throughout a live fire variety on Rovajärvi Training Area, throughout Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim welcomed the government's decision to increase defence spending 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 worldwide prominent power.

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

Why WW3 is currently here ... and how the UK will require to lead in lack

'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 unable to sustain implementation at scale.'

This is of specific issue 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 today, Russian and Ukrainian. Not a single European country to mount a single heavy armoured brigade.'

'This is an enormous oversight on the part of subsequent federal governments, not just Starmer's problem, of stopping working to purchase our military and essentially 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 productivity are absolutely nothing new. But Britain is now likewise 'stopping working to adjust' to the Trump administration's shock to the rules-based international order, said Dr Ibrahim.

The previous consultant 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 harming the last vestiges of its military may and financial power.

The U.K., he stated, '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 analysis.

Negotiations in between the U.K. and Mauritius were begun by the Tories in 2022, but an agreement was revealed 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 move demonstrates stressing strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government refers to as being characterised by excellent power competition'.

Calls for the U.K. to supply reparations for its historic function in the servant trade were revived also in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer said ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth nations that reparations would not be on the program.

A Challenger 2 primary 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 during an interview in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

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

'We understand soldiers and rockets but stop working to totally develop of the risk that having no option to China's supply chains might have on our capability to react to military aggression.'

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

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

'As global economic competition intensifies, the U.K. must choose whether to embrace a bold development program or resign itself to permanent decline.'

Britain's dedication to the concept of Net Zero might be admirable, but the pursuit will hinder growth and unknown tactical goals, he warned.

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

'We are a country that has actually failed to buy our economic, in our energy infrastructure. And we have considerable resources at our disposal.'

Nuclear power, consisting of making use of small modular reactors, could be an advantage for the British economy and energy self-reliance.

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

Britain did present a brand-new funding model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour political leaders had firmly insisted was crucial to finding the cash for pricey plant-building tasks.

While Innovate UK, Britain's development agency, has actually been declared for its grants for little energy-producing companies in the house, entrepreneurs have cautioned a wider culture of 'danger aversion' 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 image of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has consistently stopped working to acknowledge the looming 'authoritarian threat', allowing the pattern of managed decrease.

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

'The threat to this order ... has actually developed partially due to the fact that of the lack of a robust will to protect it, owing in part to ponder foreign efforts to overturn the acknowledgment of the real hiding risk they position.'

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 seriousness 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 welfare state, reforming the NHS, reforming pensions - these are essentially bodies that use up enormous amounts of funds and they'll just keep growing considerably,' he told MailOnline.

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

The report lays out recommendations in radical tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a renewed focus on protecting Britain's role as a leader in modern markets, energy security, and international trade.

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

File picture. Britain's economic stagnation might see it quickly become a '2nd tier' partner

Boarded-up stores 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 persistence that Europe pay for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent's alarming situation after years of sluggish growth and reduced costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of last year that Euro area financial efficiency has actually been 'controlled' because around 2018, highlighting 'diverse difficulties of energy dependence, making vulnerabilities, and moving worldwide trade dynamics'.

There stay extensive disparities in between European economies; German deindustrialisation has actually hit organizations hard and forced redundancies, while Spain has grown in line with its tourism-focused economy.

This stays vulnerable, however, with homeowners increasingly upset by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of economical lodging and trapped in low paying seasonal jobs.

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

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