Khan said there had been a breach of procurement rules in the contract and suggested Palantir had been the only contender.
Now the Times has reported that Palantir’s lawyers have written to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime saying they intend to challenge the decision in court. Khan’s office confirmed they had received the letter. Palantir declined to comment for this article.
A spokesperson for Khan’s office said: “The Met did not present its procurement strategy as required and the Met only fully engaged with one potential supplier: Palantir.”
…
On Tuesday morning, the technology secretary, Liz Kendall, confirmed the government was conducting a full review of the NHS contract with Palantir, assessing whether to extend the £330m deal or activate a break clause that would allow it to stop using the company’s services in early 2027.
Last week, a parliamentary committee urged the government to trigger a break, calling Palantir’s presence an “unacceptable point of weakness” in a public sector increasingly reliant on a handful of US tech firms.
A DeSmog collage of Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and the party’s home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf. Credit: Reform UK / YouTube (Farage), Yusuf (Z979)
Reform has been chasing even closer ties to Trump’s allies.
Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf is set to speak tomorrow at the Heritage Foundation, the group behind the “extreme” ‘Project 2025’ playbook for Donald Trump’s second term.
Yusuf, Reform’s home affairs spokesperson, is jetting to Washington, D.C., for an event with Nile Gardiner, director of the Heritage Foundation’s ‘Thatcher Center’.
The event description states that the pair will be discussing “key transatlantic priorities, including mass migration, border security, deportation policy, and the broader challenge of safeguarding Western institutions and values.”
The Heritage Foundation organised Project 2025, the 900-page document which proposed a series of radical, ultra-conservative policies that have served as a blueprint for Trump’s second-term agenda.
The dossier recommended banning abortion pills, restricting access to contraceptives, and removing federal funding for groups providing abortion services. “Conservatives in the states and in Washington, including in the next conservative administration, should push as hard as possible to protect the unborn in every jurisdiction in America,” it stated.
It also proposed bulldozing U.S. climate policies – slashing restrictions on fossil fuel extraction, scrapping state investment in renewable energy, and gutting the Environmental Protection Agency.
The Heritage Foundation said that the federal government should “eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere” – a policy carried out by Trump, who has called climate science a “hoax”.
A core recommendation of Project 2025 was to “dismantle the administrative state” by centralising power with the president, slashing government funding, and replacing career civil servants with ideological loyalists. Russell Vought, a Heritage Foundation alumni and one of the main co-authors of Project 2025, now serves as Trump’s director of Office of Management and Budget – wielding significant power in restructuring the federal government.
Much of this agenda is shared by Reform and its leader Nigel Farage. After years of silence on abortion, Farage recently called for the UK’s abortion limit to be reduced, labelling the current 24-week limit “utterly ludicrous”. The Reform leader has been forging alliances with U.S. anti-abortion groups, while appointing anti-abortion figures to key positions in the party – including its head of policy James Orr, who doesn’t think abortion should be allowed at any stage of foetal development, even in pregnancies resulting from rape.
“Zia Yusuf should be ashamed to share a platform with the Heritage Foundation,” said Abortion Rights chair Kerry Abel. “The architects of Project 2025 are a global threat to abortion rights, climate action and democracy.
“You cannot flirt with the far right in Washington and pretend it has no consequences here. Anyone giving credibility to this extreme agenda must be called out.”
Reform is a pro-oil party that calls for the UK’s climate targets to be scrapped. Farage has said it’s “nuts” for CO2 to be considered a pollutant. The party has also launched a ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (DOGE) to identify public spending cuts in local authorities – mirroring Trump’s agency with the same name, which has overseen billions in cuts to vital public services.
“Advocates of this brand of right-wing politics, championed by Donald Trump and embraced by Reform UK politicians, are aiming to spread their divisive rhetoric and regressive policies, from opposing abortion to actively undoing climate progress,” said Cary Mitchell, executive director of operations at Best for Britain, which campaigns against populism. “Brits have been clear that they don’t trust Trump – and a knock-off version of his authoritarian approach here in the UK would only risk all our rights.”
Farage has received £52,000 in speaking fees and £12,500 in flights and accommodation for addressing pro-Trump, MAGA events since being elected to Parliament in July 2024.
In recent days, Farage announced that he would be making a keynote address to CPAC GB, a pro-Trump conference being held in London in July. The British spin-off is being organised by disgraced former Conservative prime minister Liz Truss, and Farage initially indicated that he would be “steering well clear” of the event, only to now reverse his decision.
A version of this article was published by The New World.
Farage, a longstanding Trump supporter, has recently been attempting to put some distance between his party and the U.S. government, following the president’s unpopular war in Iran, which Farage has supported.
However, Yusuf’s appearance at the Heritage Foundation – and Farage’s at CPAC GB – underscores Reform’s MAGA loyalty. According to The Spectator, key figures behind Project 2025 have been “shuttling between London and Washington” to bestow their wisdom on Farage, while Gardiner has reportedly been acting as a bridge between the White House and Reform.
Reform politician Matthew Goodwin and its economic spokesperson Robert Jenrick have also made speeches to the Heritage Foundation in recent years.
Gardiner and the Heritage Foundation have regularly been given a platform on the right-wing media channel GB News, Farage’s largest income source since becoming an MP in July 2024.
Gardiner, who served as a foreign policy researcher and aide to former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, has made dozens of appearances on GB News. During those appearances, he has called for the UK to reintroduce the death penalty, labelled the UK government “a bunch of cowardly appeasers” for not supporting Trump’s military intervention in Iran, and called for pro-Palestine protestors to be deported if they have been arrested and are foreign nationals.
Reform has been forging close ties to a number of pro-Trump groups for a number of years. In December 2024, Farage helped to launch the Heartland Institute, a co-author of Project 2025, in the UK and is now being advised by the climate science denial group.
As reported by DeSmog, two thirds of the party’s funding has come from those with financial interests in fossil fuels.
“Reform make out like they’re your mate down the pub, standing up for everyday people. But they’re actually working closely with the establishment think tanks that helped put Trump into power, and raking in millions in donations from billionaires,” said Green Party peer Natalie Bennett. “We can see who’s pulling the strings and who they’re really working for.”
Reform and the Heritage Foundation were approached for comment.
Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Nigel Farage objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
A DeSmog collage of Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and former Conservative prime minister Liz Truss in front of a CPAC sign. Credit: Gage Skidmore (Nigel Farage and CPAC sign), Tim Hammond / No 10 Downing Street (Liz Truss)
The Reform leader has opted to join the pro-Trump conference as it comes to the UK.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has announced that he will be speaking at CPAC GB in July – the pro-Trump conference brought to the UK by disgraced former prime minister Liz Truss.
Reform sources speaking to The Guardian previously suggested that Farage would be “steering well clear” of the event, following Truss’ involvement.
However, over the weekend, Farage announced that he would be the “keynote” speaker at the event, which is also set to feature fellow Reform politician Matthew Goodwin, who lost the Gorton and Denton by-election in February.
“Farage likes to pretend he’s on the side of the ordinary working man, but he’s really a 1980s yuppie, with out of date Thatcherite ideas,” said Nick Dearden, director of the campaign group Global Justice.
“Farage said he wouldn’t turn up to CPAC GB, Liz Truss’ embarrassing attempt at a comeback, but he just couldn’t stay away because this is where he belongs – with the grifters of recently failed governments. No one should be in any doubt – Farage is part of Britain’s out of touch elite and offers no solutions to the problems Britain faces today.”
Truss, who was prime minister for 49 days in late 2022, was forced to resign after announcing £45 billion worth unfunded tax cuts and spending hikes – causing an economic shock. Experts have warned that Farage’s agenda, which echoes Truss’ economic policies, would cause similar financial repercussions.
Farage and Truss will be joined by Jacob Rees-Mogg, a former Conservative MP who was a senior minister under Truss and currently works for GB News, which employs Farage as a presenter. The Guardian also previously reported that Rees-Mogg had “no interest in making an appearance” at CPAC GB.
Former Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg on GB News.
Credit: GB News / YouTube
Truss and Farage share similar views on climate change. The Reform leader has claimed it’s “nuts” for CO2 to be considered a pollutant, while Truss has called on the UK, EU and U.S. to drop their landmark climate policies. The world’s leading climate scientists say it’s “unequivocal” that man-made CO2 is responsible for the majority of global warming experienced since the Industrial Revolution – driving extreme weather, droughts, and flooding.
The American Conservative Union has hosted annual Conservative Political Action Conferences in the U.S. since 1973, and has been closely linked to Trump and MAGA since his first presidency beginning in 2016. Farage has been a regular feature of CPACs in recent years, and has made tens of thousands speaking at pro-Trump events in since becoming an MP in July 2024.
At CPAC’s 2025 event in Washington D.C., Trump claimed that he had terminated the ”Green New Scam,” referring to Biden-era climate policies.
International CPAC leaders are now counting on the movement’s assistance to “take out” left-leaning politicians in Colombia and Brazil, while aiding the political campaigns of Europe’s staunchest Trump allies, according to audio recordings from recent CPAC events obtained by DeSmog.
Other speakers at CPAC GB include Tory peer Toby Young, Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson – who is a director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a climate science denial group, Talk TV host and former Farage advisor Alexandra Phillips, the radical right-wing YouTube hosts Mike Graham and Dan Wootton, Sun journalist Harry Cole, and Lucy Connolly, who was previously jailed for calling for people to “set fire” to hotels housing asylum seekers.
Nigel Farage reminds you that he’s the man that brought you Brexit and asks what could possibly go wrong.Lettuce complains about being compared to Liz Truss.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Rupert Lowe attends a farmers protest in Whitehall, London, March 4, 2025
REFORM UK and Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain are in a race to the far right, out-bidding each other in racist provocation and authoritarian menace.
This week, Lowe may be ahead. He crossed a further line with his pledge, in the wake of the attack in Belfast, to imprison politicians who, he claimed, had facilitated mass immigration.
This is what he wrote on X: “I want people finally held to account for what has been done to our country. Civil servants, judges, politicians. If they have knowingly placed unvetted dangerous third world savages in our communities, near our children, then a Restore Britain government will aim to prosecute them. If that includes Reform’s Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman, then so be it.
“I want to send a very clear message to officials planning to place more of these men in communities across Britain — near schools, nurseries, families. When Restore Britain wins the next election, we will pursue you with the full power of the state. That will apply retrospectively.”
Let us be clear what Lowe is proposing. Officials or politicians who took decisions which were entirely lawful at the time can be prosecuted and imprisoned retrospectively, negating a basic principle of justice.
This is the language of fascism. It is, of course, unlikely that Lowe will be in a position to implement his programme, which includes the widespread use of the death penalty for non-white offenders.
However, the Restore leader has been pushing the boundaries of the politically acceptable, and others on the right have been following, including through violence on the streets.
It is time for the labour movement to call this out for what it is – the beginnings of a move to far-right dictatorship. All democrats must unite to resist Lowe and his ilk.
UK barrister Cherie Blair. Credit: The Swift Hour / YouTube
The oil major has provided a significant chunk of the foundation’s income.
A charity set up by Cherie Blair has received more than £3.6 million from U.S. fossil fuel giant ExxonMobil, DeSmog can reveal.
The eponymous Cherie Blair Foundation for Women was founded in 2008 – providing training and resources, including mobile apps, for “women entrepreneurs” in low-income countries to start small businesses, according to its website.
The group has received at least $4.8 million (around £3.6 million) from ExxonMobil’s charitable arm, the ExxonMobil Foundation, since 2015.
The majority of this ($2.8 million, around £2.1 million) was received between 2020 and the ExxonMobil Foundation’s most recent filing in 2024.
The oil and gas giant provided roughly a-fifth of the Cherie Blair Foundation’s total income from 2020 to 2024, according to an analysis of the latter’s accounts.
Blair is a barrister and the wife of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, who last month called for the UK to abandon its climate targets and ramp-up North Sea fossil fuel exploration. There is no suggestion that Exxon funded the Cherie Blair Foundation to influence Tony Blair’s work, nor that his views have been swayed by the money provided.
The ExxonMobil Foundation is the primary philanthropic arm of ExxonMobil, the largest U.S.-based oil and gas company.
Internal company reports have revealed that Exxon knew in the 1980s that unrestrained carbon emissions have the potential to cause “great irreversible harm to our planet,” and that it predicted the exact amount of global warming the world is now experiencing. However, instead of warning the public, Exxon internally decided to publicly “emphasize the uncertainty” of climate science.
The Cherie Blair Foundation said that it is “focused on supporting women entrepreneurs in low- and middle-income countries.”
It added: “We receive funding from a range of donors to deliver programmes aligned with our mission. One of these donors is the ExxonMobil Foundation, with whom we have worked since 2015. This support has enabled us to expand access to business skills training for women entrepreneurs in Nigeria and Guyana.”
Africa is disproportionately vulnerable to climate change, with eight of the 10 countries most at risk globally located in central, west, and southern Africa.
The ExxonMobil Foundation’s available tax returns show that it gave the Cherie Blair Foundation $1 million in 2015 and 2016, $600,000 in 2024, 2023, and 2022, and $500,000 in 2021 and 2020.
Exxon’s tax returns for 2017 to 2019 do not list any donation recipients, although the Cherie Blair Foundation’s annual accounts for those years still list Exxon as a donor.
The ExxonMobil Foundation is also listed on the Cherie Blair Foundation’s “donors and partners” list for 2011 to 2014, but details of any money provided are not available in the charity’s reports or the ExxonMobil Foundation’s tax returns.
Cherie Blair is still involved in the foundation, having given an interview to The Standard about its work in March.
The foundation added: “We are not connected to the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change or to Tony Blair’s personal or professional activities, and we operate independently in our governance, strategy and operations. Information relating to funding received is publicly available in our annual report and accounts.”
ExxonMobil was approached for comment.
Tony Blair and Net Zero
In a major intervention in May, Tony Blair called on the Labour government to “use what is left of our North Sea oil and gas resources” and sideline the UK’s net zero emissions targets.
He also said new oil and gas was essential to power the data centres needed for the mass deployment of artificial intelligence (AI), which Blair has championed.
The U.S.-Israeli war with Iran has caused an energy crisis and a spike in the price of oil. Labour has argued the UK needs to deploy clean energy at a faster pace, while the Conservatives and Reform have been calling for the UK’s ban on new North Sea exploration licences to be lifted.
The Cherie Blair Foundation’s ExxonMobil donations are the latest example of fossil fuel interests backing Blair family initiatives.
TBI has been paid to advise the governments of several authoritarian petrostates, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Azerbaijan, all of which are heavily reliant on oil and gas exports.
The institute has also championed the deployment of artificial intelligence by the government and in the economy, and has supported the use of gas to power AI data centres.
TBI received $130 million (around £96.5 million) between 2021 and 2023 from billionaire tech entrepreneur Larry Ellison, founder of data software company Oracle and an ally of U.S. President Donald Trump. In total, Ellison has donated or pledged at least £257 million to TBI.
“Neither Tony nor Cherie Blair can be taken seriously when it comes to climate change, energy policy or human rights when their organisations have taken so much money from oil companies and oil dictators,” a spokesperson for the Green Party said.
In a 5,000-word essay published on the TBI website in May, Blair listed “the net-zero acceleration and phasing out of the British oil and gas industry” among Labour’s 2024 manifesto commitments which he considers a mistake.
He wrote that Labour should “remove those parts of the net-zero agenda which prioritise clean energy over cheaper energy”.
Blair, who was prime minister from 1997 to 2007, concluded: “We must prioritise cheaper energy and electrification over net zero and use what is left of our North Sea oil and gas resources. This is essential for our competitiveness and for taking advantage of AI.”
Renewable energy from wind and solar power are consistently the cheapest form of energy. High energy bills are caused by the price of oil and gas, while new North Sea exploration will do little to cut energy bills.
Data centres are currently using six percent of electricity in the UK and U.S., according to a report earlier this month by the International Data Center Authority, an industry body. The average data centre uses enough energy to power roughly 5,000 UK homes, and between 11 million and 19 million litres of water per day, the same as a town of between 30,000 and 50,000 people.
Up to 100 data centres in the UK are reportedly looking to use gas power to meet this demand, threatening emissions reduction targets. The Labour government has yet to state whether it will prevent gas-powered data centres from being built in the UK.
Last month, the government admitted that it had under-estimated the potential carbon emissions of data centres by a factor of more than 100.
Last year, Keir Starmer’s administration – which has close ties to Blair and TBI – signed a ‘Tech Prosperity Deal’ with the U.S. government through which big tech companies pledged to heavily invest in AI development in the UK. While Trump paused the deal in December, it’s unclear to what extent these investments are also on pause.
Rupert Lowe attends a farmers protest in Whitehall, London, March 4, 2025
