Prime Minister Keir Starmer (right) and then British ambassador to the United States Lord Peter Mandelson during a welcome reception at the ambassador’s residence in Washington, DC, February 27, 2025
The PM says Mandelson ‘betrayed our values’ – but ministers and advisers flock to line their pockets with corporate cash, says SOLOMON HUGHES
WES STREETING says Peter Mandelson “fundamentally betrayed our values.” But Mandelson helped write the values of New Labour, which Streeting and Starmer and their whole team are following.
Peter Mandelson denies wrongdoing, but the emails between him and Jeffrey Epstein look like sleazy corruption. It’s no surprise Streeting and Starmer want to put distance between him and them.
But Mandelson’s career follows the “New Labour” method he helped design: taking the side of the rich and big corporations, especially around low tax, deregulation and privatisation.
Taking favours from the rich while in office. Taking lucrative jobs working from the corporations they favoured in government when they leave office.
Squashing the Labour left who might try and stop the party being used as a launchpad for these post-ministerial corporate careers.
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This became a basic “New Labour” pattern: when ministers stood down, many joined the private corporations they helped while in power, with ex-ministers taking jobs with privatised water companies, private security firms like G4S, arms firms and so on.
These post-ministerial careers often pay much more than actually being a minister, so Labour MPs have an incentive to push pro-business policies, even if they are wildly unpopular: Labour might haemorrhage enough working-class support to lose elections, but the ministers end up earning more in the long term.
Starmer’s government brought Mandelson back and bought into all his “New Labour” values. Even though the government is still quite new, we can already see signs that Starmer’s team will also leave government for corporate jobs, just like Mandelson.
Labour rehired one of the key Labour ministers who did this back in the day. Wes Streeting employs Alan Milburn as an adviser.
Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership is intensely relaxed about assaulting those least able to defend themselves – the very poorest and most vulnerable.Keir Starmer explains that he feels no shame or guilt benefitting personally from gifts from the rich and powerful while insisting on policies of severe austerity causing suffering and death.Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the “hard times”.
Green party leader Zack Polanski (Green Party of England and Wales). Image: Bristol Green Party Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
The Green Party leader has delivered a notice of contract termination to Palantir which has a seven year £330m contract with the NHS to build FDP, the ‘NHS Federated Data Platform’ to link and manage patient data.
Green Party leader Zack Polanski said:
“I have today handed a letter to Palantir serving it notice to pack its bags and get the hell out of the NHS.
“This Trump supporting military surveillance outfit has no place in Britain’s most important institution. The NHS cares for patients and brings our country together. Palantir’s most recent history is to actively aid and abet genocide in Gaza and to provide surveillance data for Trump’s paramilitary ICE squads, currently causing death and mayhem on the streets of America.
“When Wes Streeting can take some time out from meeting his private health donors, he should cancel this contract right now. If he doesn’t, my letter today to Palantir makes clear we will use every method at our disposal to force them out. Doctors have made clear they do not trust Palantir with patients’ private data, and with its appalling track record, I am with the doctors”.
There will be a review of the contract in 2027, with the UK government’s Contracts Finder database showing a formal contract end date of 15 February 2027 – so the government could end it then.
The contract was awarded by NHS England in 2023 by the Conservative Government. Palantir is also known to have close links to the Labour government, and it has been reported that the corporation hired Peter Mandelson to lobby the Labour Government to help them win more government contracts.
Palantir is an American technology company that specialises in artificial intelligence powered military and surveillance technology and data analytics and was founded by the Trump donor Peter Thiel.
The BMA last year passed a formal resolution calling for the Palantir NHS contract to be cancelled saying it, “threatens to undermine public trust in NHS data systems” and is unclear how the sensitive patient data would be processed by Palantir, citing the firm’s track record of creating discriminatory policing software in the US” and its “close links to a US government which shows little regard for international law”.
The Government has mandated providers and Integrated Care Boards to Palantir’s Federated Data Platform (FDP) to ‘start making use of core products, data capabilities and population health management tools by 2028/29, according to the Medium Term Planning Framework published by the Department of Health.
However, according to NHS figures, fewer than a quarter of England’s 215 hospital trusts were actively using FDP by the end of 2024. Some Trust’s are on record as questioning its functionality and purpose.
Zack Polanski’s letter to Palantir CEO Alex Karp:
Dear Alex,
I am today putting you on notice that the Green Party of England and Wales is calling for your contract with the NHS to be cancelled.
We object to your involvement in the NHS on three main grounds:
We do not trust you with the use of people’s health data. Your track record around the world of surveillance and discriminatory use of data contributing to abuses and genocide means we don’t believe you a fit partner for the NHS, an institution that has served this country with distinction since 1948.
You have actively aided the genocide in Gaza. In January 2024, you signed a deal with the IDF to increase its “advanced technology provision” to Israel in support of war related missions. You have said that you are “exceedingly proud” of Palantir’s involvement in what you called “operationally crucial in Israel.” The UN special rapporteur on human rights identified Palantir as complicit in war crimes and “profiting from genocide” in Gaza.
It has been reported that you are working on a tool for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a “confidence score” on the person’s current address. We are strongly of the view that ICE is acting like a personalised paramilitary police force to Donald Trump, and recently shot dead Renee Good in cold blood. We stand in solidarity with her.
Further, I know that companies such as yours hire corporate lobbyists such as Peter Mandelson to assess ‘political risk’. I have some advice you can have for free. The political risk is very high for your continuing involvement with the NHS. The Green Party is advancing, and we will use every means at our disposal, including that of our many thousands of members to get you out of the NHS. We will form alliances with like-minded campaigners and MPs, of all parties, so that the pressure on the Government to cancel your NHS contract becomes too great. Whatever happens at the next general election, we will use whatever influence we have to insist on your removal from the NHS.
My understanding is that there is real hesitation among hospital trusts and Integrated Care Boards to use your platform, and from my conversations with people in the NHS, they don’t believe it offers anything they can’t already access, and that it has little to no impact on patient care or reducing waiting times for treatment.
Yours sincerely,
Zack Polanski, Leader of the Green Party in England and Wales
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer 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.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
Palantir is supporting violent US hegemony. It has no place in UK public services | Ina Fassbender / AFP via Getty Images
Palantir is not a normal software company. It was founded with an explicit mission which remains at the heart of its operations today: to maintain US global domination.
We know exactly what that means. Endless wars. Drone strikes. A vast machinery of surveillance and occupation stretching from Afghanistan and Iraq to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. A world in which Washington’s military reach grows ever longer, and the UK prime minister increasingly behaves less like an ally and more like a compliant poodle, nodding along to whatever the White House demands.
On an investor call last February, Palantir’s CEO, Alex Karp, said he was “super proud” of what his company does. Perhaps he was referring to Palantir’s role in enabling ICE to target migrant communities and tear families apart. Or perhaps he meant reports that its technology has allegedly helped the Israeli military generate “kill lists” – a practice condemned by human-rights organisations for contributing to the mass civilian casualties we are witnessing in Gaza.
Whatever Karp had in mind, Keir Starmer did not appear troubled. Later that month, he flew to Palantir’s Washington headquarters to kiss the ring of a corporation deeply embedded in the US military and intelligence infrastructure. He did so alongside his then US ambassador, Peter Mandelson – close friend of the late notorious paedophile Jeffrey Epstein – whose lobbying firm, Global Counsel, has long represented Palantir.
Since then, this government has only tightened its embrace. Building on ties established under the Conservatives, Labour is embedding a company accused by campaigners of facilitating human-rights violations deeper and deeper into our public life. Palantir already operates inside the NHS and across Whitehall – particularly within the Ministry of Defence – pulling Britain further into the slipstream of US military priorities and the worst excesses of the American security state.
No company so entangled in foreign military operations and border policing should be anywhere near our public services. Full stop.
Experts and civil liberties campaigners have repeatedly warned about Palantir’s expanding access to sensitive British data, including NHS medical records – data that the US private healthcare industry is eager to exploit. The risks to privacy, accountability and democracy are profound.
Yet, as with the Tories before them, nothing is off the table for this Labour government when it comes to carving up public services for multinational corporations and their lobbyists. Their deference to Washington is now so complete that they barely bother to conceal their enthusiasm for cosying up to Donald Trump’s network of tech-bro oligarchs. We saw this clearly last summer, when Starmer rolled out the red carpet for Palantir and signed off a £1.5bn “strategic partnership” – at the very moment public services across Britain were collapsing under austerity. It begs the question: who, exactly, is Starmer unwilling to roll out the blood-stained red carpet for?
Across the country, libraries are closing. Swimming pools are shutting. Councils are going bankrupt. But somehow, there is always money available for a CIA-funded contractor at the heart of the US war machine.
And it does not stop at Westminster. Palantir’s tentacles are already extending into our communities. In my constituency of Coventry, the Labour-run council awarded the company a £500,000 contract to develop an AI tool for children’s services. Yes – a firm implicated in military targeting abroad and the kidnapping of children as young as five in the US, was hired to shape how we safeguard children here at home.
We fought back. Led by Your Party councillor, Grace Lewis, and backed by our unions and community campaigners, we forced that contract into review. And let me be absolutely clear: we will not stop until it is cancelled entirely.
But this fight is bigger than one contract or one city. We need a politics that draws a clear line: Palantir – and every corporation that profits from occupation, surveillance, genocide and war – has no place in our society and should never again receive a penny of public money.
This country needs a party willing to resist a government that bows to Washington, sells off our public services and hands power to war-profiteering tech giants. That party is Your Party.
And our fight is only just beginning.
Zarah Sultana is the Your Party MP for Coventry South
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer 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.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
Green party leader Zack Polanski (Green Party of England and Wales). Image: Bristol Green Party Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
Responding to the news that Lord Mandelson has been sacked as the UK’s ambassador to the United States, Green Party Leader, Zack Polanski, said:
“Starmer’s instinct was to stand by Peter Mandelson, despite the evidence. His resignation now isn’t a matter of principle; it’s simple political expediency. It’s a symbol of a broken politics where the same insiders always fail up. How long until Mandelson ends up in a high-paid consultancy somewhere? While another washed-up former Westminster insider ends up in Washington? His resignation, like his original appointment, is a sign of a dirty, broken political system.”
Prime Minister Keir Starmer (right) and then British ambassador to the United States Lord Peter Mandelson during a welcome reception at the ambassador’s residence in Washington, DC, February 27, 2025
