George Monbiot: Palantir has wormed its way into the British state

Tom Watson, former deputy leader of the Labour party, has taken a job as senior vice-president at Palantir — and has a question for anyone who objects to the company's public contracts. "Do you want to let the rule of law lead procurement practice," he asked, "or do you want mob rule to lead procurement practices?" George Monbiot, writing in the Guardian, answers with the company's client list.

That list now runs through the British state. Palantir holds contracts with the NHS, several police forces, the Financial Conduct Authority and the atomic weapons establishment, alongside Ministry of Defence deals worth hundreds of millions. An investigation by Peter Geoghegan and Lucas Amin in the London Review of Books found the US company "willing to spend more on securing political access than almost all of its British and continental competitors", and making abundant use of Peter Mandelson's lobbying firm Global Counsel. Watson, who once took on the Murdoch empire, is one of more than 30 former UK ministers and officials Palantir now employs.

The entry route was not a procurement scandal. In 2019 Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel met in Downing Street; the meeting went unrecorded. When the Covid-19 pandemic began a few months later, Palantir was invited back and was working inside the NHS within days — for a fee of £1. Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, has warned that such loss-leaders create reliance, at which point the supplier can name its price.

In 2025, Mandelson — then UK ambassador to the US — brokered a meeting between Keir Starmer and Palantir executives, including global chief executive Alex Karp and UK chief executive Louis Mosley, where they discussed defence spending. Mandelson still held a stake of around a fifth in Global Counsel, whose clients included Palantir. The meeting was never declared on transparency registers, and No 10 refused to say whether Starmer knew of the relationship. A few months later, Palantir secured a £241m Ministry of Defence contract without an open tender. Related reporting in the same paper describes a recent Palantir lobbyist playing a key role in Andy Burnham's campaign to become prime minister.

Monbiot concedes the contracts might have been awarded lawfully — and notes that "mob rule" has two common meanings: intimidation by crowds of thugs, and a pejorative term for democracy.

Palantir's first NHS contract was priced at £1. The defence contract that followed the prime minister's unrecorded meeting with its executives was priced at £241m.