“Are you telling me that winking at corruption is government policy?”
“No, no, Minister! It could never be government policy. That is unthinkable! … Only government practice.”
– Yes, Minister, Episode 4, Season 3
The British state would like its subjects to believe that corruption is an exotic disease – only affecting evil Russian oligarchs and ‘third world’ countries. Bribery, we are told, is unimaginable in a democracy run by ‘Right Honourable gentlemen’!
Yet scratch beneath the surface, and you will find that the state is tied by a thousand strings to the interests of the ruling class.
Enter Palantir, a company which was awarded a £330 million contract by the previous Tory government in 2023 to deliver a ‘federated data platform’ for NHS England (see letter from NHS worker below).
Palantir’s shady dealings
Palantir is a CIA-funded analytics giant whose entire business is built upon supplying and analysing data for various militaries, security services, police forces, and intelligence agencies around the world.
Most egregiously, it provides intelligence to the Israeli Defense Forces for slaughtering Palestinians, and assisted the US government in the deportation of immigrant children’s parents, breaking up countless families.
To put it plainly, the British government is handing over all the health records of all English citizens to a private US company with ties to the Pentagon. You’d think, even for these loyal lapdogs of US imperialism, that this might constitute a breach of ‘national security’!
On the contrary: health secretary Wes Streeting has formerly bemoaned the “glacial” speed at which Palantir’s platform has been rolled out throughout the NHS. Mr Streeting wants privatisation at breakneck speed, and nothing less!
Since then, Labour has refused to divulge details on a meeting with Peter Thiel – Palantir’s co-founder and part of Trump’s billionaire cabal – on the grounds that doing so could harm “diplomatic relations” between the US and Britain!
Bribery
Palantir has had dealings with various arms of the British state, from the Border Force to local police forces.
What emerges when you look into these shady cases is a pattern of lobbying and legalised bribery.
For example, the company’s British chief, Tory activist Louis Mosley (yes, the grandson of Oswald, who headed the British Union of Fascists) made a £5,000 ‘personal donation’ in January 2023 to the then housing minister, Lee Rowley.
Of course, £5,000 is small change as compared to multi-million contracts, or even to MPs’ bloated salaries and expenses. But that same Lee Rowley then awarded Palantir with another juicy contract just weeks after joining the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities – his first ministerial post.
It’s not a stretch to suggest that the same minister could have received other benefits that are not listed on the parliamentary records. And in fact, other high-profile British politicians have received exactly such treatment for their subservience.
Matt Hancock, another former health secretary, received donations from Babylon Health, a partner company in which Palantir then took a major stake until the company collapsed.
But it’s not just the Tories that were recipients of Thiel’s dirty money: Palantir has clearly played both fields, in its campaign to weasel its way into the government’s decision-making.
Former Labour party deputy leader Tom Watson was the de facto leader of the party’s extreme right wing when Labour was led by left winger Jeremy Corbyn. After dutifully waging war on the socialists within the party, Watson became a paid adviser for Palantir.
The same Watson also received a whopping £540,000 when he was deputy leader – this time from another relative of Oswald and Louis: Max Mosley. It’s nice to know they keep their business family-run!
Since then, Palantir scandalously sponsored Labour’s conference in August 2023, alongside a litany of other private companies and banks.
And in fact, the company’s gradual rise to prominence in the UK has been aided by arch-Blairite and newly appointed ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson, via his lobbying firm Global Counsel.
Revolving door
Meanwhile, the Financial Times recently published an entire exposé titled “Palantir’s ‘revolving door’ with government spurs huge growth”.
It shows how intimately tied Palantir is — both in Britain and the US – to senior politicians. This lobbying is an essential factor in the company’s exponential share growth, relative to its comparatively stagnant competitors in the defence contracting sector.
The list of facts provided is extensive. Before winning the NHS contract, Palantir hired two senior NHS officials. It has hired many other senior civil servants. It has used a former MI6 chief to broker negotiations. It has ‘wined and dined’ senior officials.
And all this of course has given Palantir a seat at the table, whose representatives attended “at least 13 ministerial-level meetings between 2022 and 2023”.
Revolving doors between parliament and boards of directors; wining and dining politicians; lavish gifts and party donations; and even, it would seem, the occasional brown envelope filled with cash – all of this is part and parcel of the capitalist system.
In other words, corruption is not a bug. It’s a feature – and always has been. As Lenin wrote over a century ago in The State in Revolution:
“Another reason why the omnipotence of “wealth” is more certain in a democratic republic is that it does not depend on defects in the political machinery or on the faulty political shell of capitalism. A democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained possession of this very best shell [through the Streetings, Watsons, Hancocks, and co.], it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic can shake it.”
This is what it means to live in a ‘democracy’ under capitalism: democracy for the highest bidder. To put an end to corruption, we need to smash this oligarchy, and kick capitalism out of the NHS!
Palantir is a dangerous tool
Polly, NHS England worker
Over 13.5 million hours of doctors’ time is lost annually from ‘inadequate or malfunctioning IT systems’. This disease plagues the NHS at the same time as patients die in hospital corridors. Rather than looking to workers and patients to resolve this crisis, or putting an end to the inefficient patchwork of local trusts and outsourced service providers, state bureaucrats have turned to the American oligarchy.
In 2023, NHS England awarded a £330 million contract, published with some 417 out of 586 pages censored, to Peter Thiel’s CIA-funded private data venture, Palantir. The contract was awarded for delivery of a Federated Data Platform (FDP) which will hold all national healthcare data in one place.
Palantir is a loyal tool of the establishment, having already won billions of dollars in contracts with US state institutions. Such as a $41 million data contract with US Immigration & Customs Enforcement for the identification and deportation of undocumented immigrants. And a ‘strategic partnership’ with the Israeli Defence Ministry to supply technology for the slaughter in Gaza.
In the UK, data sharing between the NHS and the Home Office has already created a public health risk, as many migrants avoid healthcare, fearing the impact on their immigration status.
Since receiving a rushed ‘£1 contract’ for data storage during the COVID-19 pandemic, Palantir has sunk its teeth into the NHS, winning over £60 million in extension contracts, without any consultation from healthcare workers or patients.
The open exploitation of NHS data will be used to develop new products and services, which can then be sold back. Starmer’s big business ‘Labour’ government has no concern for the privacy, security or health of ordinary working people. Workers and patients currently have no say in the operations of the NHS.
The BMA has heavily criticised the FDP deal, and UNISON has a national policy against it. But to reverse this thievery, we need to wage a tireless struggle to reverse privatisation, and put the NHS under worker and patient control.
