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Britain is on course to becoming a '2nd tier' European nation like Spain or Italy due to economic decline and a weak military that undermines its effectiveness to allies, a professional has warned.

Research teacher Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning new report that the U.K. has actually 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 current growth rates.

The plain evaluation weighed that successive federal government failures in regulation and bring in investment had actually caused Britain to miss out on the 'industries of the future' courted by developed 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 evaluates that Britain is now on track to fall back Poland in terms of per capita income by 2030, which the central European nation's armed force will soon exceed the U.K.'s along lines of both workforce and devices on the current trajectory.

'The concern is that when we are downgraded to a second tier middle power, it's going to be almost difficult 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 bold leaders who are able to make the challenging decisions today.'

People pass boarded up shops on March 20, 2024 in Hastings, England

A British soldier reloads his rifle on February 17, 2025 in Smardan, Romania

Staff Sergeant Rai utilizes a radio to speak 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 decision 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 an internationally influential power.

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

Why WW3 is already here ... and how the UK will require to lead in America's lack

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

This is of specific concern at a time of increased geopolitical tension, with Britain pegged to be amongst the leading forces in Europe's rapid rearmament project.

'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 governments, not simply Starmer's problem, of stopping working to purchase our military and essentially outsourcing security to the United States and NATO,' he informed MailOnline.

'With the U.S. getting fatigue of supplying the security umbrella to Europe, Europe now has to stand on its own and the U.K. would have been in a premium position to actually lead European defence. But none of the European nations are.'

Slowed defence spending and patterns of low performance are nothing new. But Britain is now also 'stopping working to change' to the Trump administration's shock to the rules-based worldwide order, stated Dr Ibrahim.

The previous consultant to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review noted in the report that in spite of the 'weakening' of the institutions as soon as 'secured' 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 progressively expensive 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 been the source of much analysis.

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

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

Calls for the U.K. to supply reparations for its historical function in the servant trade were revived also in October in 2015, though Sir Keir Starmer stated ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth nations that reparations would not be on the agenda.

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 an interview 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 danger.

'We comprehend soldiers and rockets but fail to fully envisage the danger that having no alternative to China's supply chains may have on our capability to react to military hostility.'

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

'Without instant policy changes to reignite development, Britain will end up being a diminished power, reliant on stronger allies and vulnerable to foreign coercion,' the Foreign Policy writer stated.

'As global financial competition heightens, the U.K. must choose whether to welcome a strong development agenda or resign itself to permanent decline.'

Britain's dedication to the concept of Net Zero may be admirable, but the pursuit will inhibit development and obscure tactical objectives, he cautioned.

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

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

Nuclear power, including making use of small modular reactors, might be a boon for the British economy and energy self-reliance.

'But we've stopped working to commercialise them and undoubtedly that's going to take a considerable amount of time.'

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

While Innovate UK, Britain's innovation company, has actually been declared for its grants for small energy-producing companies in the house, business owners have actually alerted a larger culture of 'risk hostility' in the U.K. stifles 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 stopped working to acknowledge the looming 'authoritarian threat', allowing the trend of handled decline.

But the resurgence of autocracies on the world stage risks further undermining the order from which Britain 'advantages tremendously' as a globalised economy.

'The threat to this order ... has established partially due to the fact that of the absence of a robust will to defend it, owing in part to ponder foreign efforts to subvert the acknowledgment of the real hiding hazard they pose.'

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 as much as the seriousness of investing in defence.

But Dr Ibrahim cautioned 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 well-being state, reforming the NHS, reforming pensions - these are essentially bodies that use up immense amounts of funds and they'll simply keep growing significantly,' he informed MailOnline.

'You might double the NHS budget and it will truly not make much of a damage. So all of this will need fundamental reform and will take a great deal of guts from whomever is in power since 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 role as a leader in state-of-the-art markets, energy security, and international trade.

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

File picture. Britain's economic stagnancy might see it soon end up being a 'second tier' partner

Boarded-up stores in Blackpool as more than 13,000 shops 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 situation after decades of sluggish development and lowered costs.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research evaluated at the end of last year that Euro location financial efficiency has been 'suppressed' considering that around 2018, showing 'complex challenges of energy reliance, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and shifting global trade characteristics'.

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

This stays vulnerable, however, with residents significantly agitated by the perceived pandering to foreign visitors as they are evaluated of inexpensive lodging and trapped in low paying seasonal tasks.

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

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