Britain is on course to ending up being a 'second tier' European country like Spain or Italy due to financial decrease and a weak military that weakens its usefulness to allies, a professional has alerted.

Research professor Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning brand-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 present growth rates.

The stark evaluation weighed that successive federal government failures in policy and attracting investment had actually triggered Britain to lose out on the 'industries of the future' courted by established 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 latest 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 regards to per capita earnings by 2030, and that the central European nation's military will soon surpass the U.K.'s along lines of both manpower and devices on the existing trajectory.

'The issue is that as soon as we are reduced to a second tier middle power, it's going to be practically impossible to return. 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 strong leaders who are able to make the challenging choices today.'

People pass boarded up stores 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 with Archer crews from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery during a live fire variety on Rovajärvi Training Area, throughout Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim welcomed the federal government's choice to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, however warned 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 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, however likewise a smaller sized army and one that is unable to sustain implementation at scale.'

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

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

'This is a huge oversight on the part of subsequent governments, not just Starmer's problem, 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 has to base on its own and the U.K. would have remained in a premium position to in fact lead European defence. But none of the European nations are.'

Slowed defence costs and patterns of low productivity are nothing brand-new. But Britain is now likewise 'stopping working to change' to the Trump administration's jolt to the rules-based international order, stated Dr Ibrahim.

The former consultant to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review noted in the report that in spite of the 'weakening' of the institutions when 'protected' by the U.S., Britain is responding by damaging the last vestiges of its military may and financial power.

The U.K., he said, 'seems to be making increasingly costly 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 examination.

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

Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security believe thank warned at the time that 'the move demonstrates stressing tactical ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government refers to as being characterised by great power competition'.

Calls for the U.K. to offer reparations for its historic function 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 program.

An Opposition 2 main battle 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 a press conference in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

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

'We understand soldiers and rockets but fail to totally envisage the threat that having no option to China's supply chains may have on our ability to react to military aggression.'

He suggested a new security model to 'improve the U.K.'s tactical dynamism' based upon a rethink of migratory policy and threat assessment, access to uncommon earth minerals in a market dominated by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and independence through investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on atomic energy.

'Without immediate policy modifications to reignite development, Britain will become a reduced power, reliant on stronger allies and vulnerable to foreign coercion,' the Foreign Policy columnist said.

'As worldwide financial competition intensifies, the U.K. needs to choose whether to accept a vibrant development agenda or resign itself to irreversible decline.'

Britain's dedication to the concept of Net Zero might be laudable, however the pursuit will prevent growth and odd tactical objectives, he cautioned.

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

'We are a nation 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 usage of little modular reactors, could be a boon for the British economy and energy self-reliance.

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

Britain did present a new funding model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour politicians had actually insisted was key to finding the cash for costly plant-building projects.

While Innovate UK, Britain's innovation company, has been heralded for its grants for little energy-producing business in the house, entrepreneurs have alerted a wider culture of 'danger hostility' in the U.K. stifles financial 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', permitting the trend of handled decline.

But the renewal 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 danger to this order ... has developed partly since of the lack of a robust will to safeguard it, owing in part to deliberate foreign attempts to overturn the acknowledgment of the real hiding threat they posture.'

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 approximately the urgency of purchasing defence.

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is not enough. He urged 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 essentially bodies that use up immense amounts of funds and they'll just keep growing considerably,' he told MailOnline.

'You could double the NHS spending plan and it will actually not make much of a damage. So all of this will require basic reform and will take a great deal of courage from whomever is in power because it will make them unpopular.'

The report outlines suggestions in radical tax reform, pro-growth migration policies, and a restored concentrate on protecting Britain's function as a leader in high-tech industries, energy security, and international trade.

Vladimir Putin talks to the governor of Arkhangelsk area Alexander Tsybulsky during their meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, March 11, 2025

File image. Britain's financial stagnancy might see it soon become a '2nd tier' partner

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

Britain is not alone in falling back. The Trump administration's persistence that Europe spend for its own defence has actually 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 area financial efficiency has been 'subdued' given that around 2018, illustrating 'complex challenges of energy reliance, making vulnerabilities, and moving international trade dynamics'.

There stay extensive discrepancies between European economies