Britain is on course to ending up being a '2nd tier' European country like Spain or Italy due to economic decline and a weak military that undermines its usefulness to allies, an expert has alerted.

Research teacher Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning new report that the U.K. has been paralysed by low financial 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 evaluation weighed that succeeding government failures in policy and bring in 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 wrote in The Henry Jackson Society's most current 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 earnings by 2030, which the main European nation's military will quickly exceed the U.K.'s along lines of both workforce and devices on the present trajectory.

'The concern is that once we are reduced to a second tier middle power, it's going to be practically difficult to get back. Nations do not return from this,' Dr Ibrahim told MailOnline today.

'This is going to be accelerated decline unless we nip this in the bud and have vibrant leaders who have the ability to make the difficult 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 speak to Archer teams from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery during a live fire range on Rovajärvi Training Area, throughout Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim welcomed the government's decision to increase defence costs to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, however cautioned much deeper, systemic issues 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 'falling back even second-tier European powers', he cautioned.

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

This is of specific issue at a time of increased geopolitical stress, with Britain pegged to be amongst the leading forces in Europe's quick rearmament task.

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

'This is a massive oversight on the part of subsequent governments, not just Starmer's issue, 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 needs to stand on its own and the U.K. would have been in a premium position to really lead European defence. But none of the European countries are.'

Slowed defence costs and patterns of low performance are nothing new. But Britain is now likewise '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 kept in mind in the report that in spite of the 'weakening' of the organizations as soon as 'secured' by the U.S., Britain is reacting by damaging the last vestiges of its military might and economic power.

The U.K., he stated, 'appears to be making increasingly expensive gestures' like the ₤ 9bn handover of the strategic Chagos Islands and opening talks on reparations for Caribbean Slavery.

The surrender of the in the Indian Ocean has been the source of much examination.

Negotiations 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 tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. federal government describes as being characterised by excellent power competition'.

Require the U.K. to offer reparations for its historic role in the servant 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.

An Opposition 2 main fight tank of the British forces during the NATO's Spring Storm workout 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 assessed that the U.K. seems to be acting versus its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of danger.

'We comprehend soldiers and missiles but fail to totally develop of the danger that having no alternative to China's supply chains might have on our capability to react to military aggressiveness.'

He recommended a new security design to 'boost the U.K.'s strategic dynamism' based on a rethink of migratory policy and hazard assessment, access to rare earth minerals in a market dominated by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and self-reliance through investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on atomic energy.

'Without immediate policy changes to reignite growth, Britain will end up being a lessened power, reliant on stronger allies and susceptible to foreign browbeating,' the Foreign Policy columnist said.

'As global economic competitors intensifies, the U.K. needs to choose whether to accept a strong development agenda or resign itself to irreversible decline.'

Britain's commitment to the idea of Net Zero might be admirable, however the pursuit will inhibit growth and unknown strategic goals, he alerted.

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

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

Nuclear power, including the usage of little modular reactors, might be an advantage for the British economy and energy independence.

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

Britain did present a brand-new funding design for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour politicians had actually insisted was essential to discovering the cash for pricey plant-building projects.

While Innovate UK, Britain's development company, has actually been declared for its grants for small energy-producing companies in your home, entrepreneurs have warned a larger culture of 'threat hostility' in the U.K. suppresses 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 picture of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

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

But the resurgence of autocracies on the world stage dangers even more weakening the rules-based worldwide order from which Britain 'benefits tremendously' as a globalised economy.

'The risk to this order ... has actually established partly because of the absence of a robust will to protect it, owing in part to deliberate foreign attempts to overturn the acknowledgment of the real prowling risk they posture.'

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

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is inadequate. He urged a top-down reform of 'essentially our entire 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 use up immense amounts of funds and they'll just keep growing substantially,' he informed MailOnline.

'You might double the NHS budget plan and it will actually not make much of a dent. So all of this will require essential reform and will take a lot of courage from whomever is in power because it will make them undesirable.'

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

Vladimir Putin talks 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 economic stagnancy might see it soon become a '2nd tier' partner

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

Britain is not alone in falling behind. The Trump administration's persistence that Europe pay for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent's alarming scenario after years of slow development and reduced spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research examined at the end of in 2015 that Euro area economic efficiency has actually been 'suppressed' because around 2018, illustrating 'multifaceted obstacles of energy dependence, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and shifting global trade dynamics'.

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

This remains fragile, nevertheless, with homeowners increasingly agitated by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of economical lodging and trapped in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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