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When Keir Starmer travelled to Washington DC to burnish the UK’s global credentials last February, one of his first stops after his meeting with President Donald Trump wasn’t a UN forum or humanitarian body. Rather, it was Palantir — a controversial American surveillance tech company, headquartered just a 10-minute drive from the Oval Office.
The visit was, as the Good Law Project revealed, arranged by Peter Mandelson — Britain’s Ambassador to the United States and a long-time Labour power broker. Yet no official record was kept: no minutes, no transcript. Just a handshake, a quiet word, and — for many — a growing unease
Palantir is no ordinary tech firm. Rising to prominence out of the War on Terror, seeded with funds from the CIA’s venture capital arm In-Q-Tel, and raised on a diet of contracts with spy agencies and the US military, Palantir is arguably the bastard child of military-industrial intelligence gathering, co-founded by Peter Thiel, a self-described conservative libertarian.
Palantir’s tools have been used to deport migrant families, enable drone warfare, and entrench policing systems later accused of fuelling institutional racism.
Recent reporting by 404 Media reveals that the company’s collaboration with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has deepened under the new Trump administration. Building on its previous involvement, the company is now actively supplying leads to help locate individuals targeted for deportation.
Now, Palantir is over here. It sits at the heart of the UK’s NHS—its UK head recently boasted, “Every NHS hospital has its own instance of #Palantir software”—and has secured hundreds of millions in Government contracts with the Ministry of Defence (MOD), health service, police, local councils, and an array of other bodies.
What precisely Starmer and Mandelson discussed with Palantir remains unknown. The Cabinet Office insists it was merely an “informal visit”. Yet the circumstances are far from casual.
At the time of the trip, Palantir was still a client of Global Counsel—the lobbying firm founded by Mandelson. Though Mandelson had stepped back from CEO duties, he remains president and chair of its international advisory board.
Then there is former MP and Labour peer Tom Watson, who The Times revealed had taken up a paid position on the company’s ‘public services advisory board’. Watson is also a senior advisor to PR firm Lodestone Oxford Limited, which listed Palantir as a client between October and December 2024.
So once again, we find a Labour leader aligning with certain men—and we must ask where do their loyalties truly lie: with shared political mission or with private profit?
Questioning this matters because Palantir’s ambitions are unmistakable: it aims to become the default operating system for government. Its Foundry platform already underpins key parts of the NHS, thanks to its lead role in a £330 million consortium contract for the now widely implemented Federated Data Platform—an agreement so heavily redacted that three-quarters of its 586 pages were blacked out.
More information about the deal only came to light following legal action by the Good Law Project, which uncovered that Palantie was handed the contract before negotiations had concluded.
The Foreign Office says it has no emails about Mandelson’s role arranging Starmer’s visit. Elsewhere, Leicestershire Police has also removed details of its £800,000 Palantir deal from public record after being asked about it by journalists, and is now refusing to release details of the contract to the public via Freedom of Information (FOI) requests.
Similarly, 35 out of 45 UK police forces have refused to confirm or deny any relationship with the company under FOI, citing “national security” grounds (though it is known Palantir is doing business with two forces: Leicestershire and Bedfordshire — where it is being used “to tackle organised crime”, though once again no contract has been released).
Byline Times can also reveal that the company has now signed a £500,000 deal to supply a “strategic AI platform” with Coventry City Council. This follows a £4.5 million award in 2014 to provide an “intelligence hub” for Sunderland Council.
Palantir’s relationship with the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) also forms a significant part of its rising influence. Since at least 2014, Palantir has been working closely with the MoD, notably through lucrative pilot schemes such as a £1.6 million Royal Navy Data Science project in 2018. Recently the company won a £75 million contract with Defence Digital, the MoD’s tech-focused unit, to dri