When Andy Burnham sat in his office in Manchester as the regional mayor, building an unrivaled power base on Britain’s left that ultimately catapulted him into the prime minister’s office, he did so in the only region of England that refused Palantir access to its data.
Now, as Burnham enters his first parliamentary session as British leader, Palantir could prove to be his first major test in office, as sources in Westminster tell WIRED the prime minister is under significant pressure from his new colleagues to break the company’s contentious contract with the National Health Service. The dispute could become the first major crisis of Burnham’s premiership, with those sources saying pressure is mounting on him to decide the future of Palantir’s growing role across the British state in the coming weeks.
Palantir currently holds contracts worth around £670m in the public sector, including major deals in health, defence, and policing. The largest—a £330m contract to manage healthcare data on the NHS Federated Data Platform—is the one Palantir opponents have opted to focus on. Reports circulated during Labour’s leadership election that Burnham would block Palantir, but they were swiftly cut down in follow-up reporting. Campaigners are now pushing for Burnham to use a break clause in Palantir’s contract with the NHS, which would see the deal end in 2027.
Burnham’s government and the Labour Party he leads are fractiously split on the issue. On one side, leading officials and parliamentary veterans argue cautiously in favor of the provider. On the other, Labour’s left-leaning grassroots and influential backbench MPs are pressuring the government to end the relationship, and in the process begin a huge schism with the company.
The government has so far obfuscated in response to an official petition asking for people to be able to opt out of Palantir’s FDP, after it got 10,000 signatures, saying only that the government would consider it in future policy making. A similar, non-official petition calls for Palantir to be removed from the NHS entirely and has already reached 177,000 signatures.
Growing public opposition to the company has put the government under real pressure to reduce Palantir’s role in the British state. WIRED spoke to three Whitehall sources who believe that, if the deal is to be broken, a decision to do so would need to be made in the next few weeks.
“Given the need to hire an alternate provider or make a decision to move the contract in house, any decision to tear up the contract would need to be done by the Autumn,” one Whitehall source tells WIRED. “Otherwise the government would risk botching any changeover.”
Many of the supporters who secured Burnham’s position in Downing Street are natural Palantir skeptics who come from the soft left. Intrinsically wary of privatisation, they want to see the firm’s role reduced or removed entirely from British politics.
Beyond the inner circle, opposition to Palantir is organised and loud, including many members of the Socialist Campaign Group, a faction within the Labour Party, who are on the whole more experienced MPs. Burnham supporters like Rachael Maskell have vocally opposed Palantir.
Maskell has highlighted her own work as an NHS clinician to justify her opposition to the company in a parliamentary debate in April. During a debate on Palantir’s FDP in February, she said: “This US spytech company is now deep into the data of our NHS and of course patients across the country. I know as a former clinician in the NHS, trust is key. If you do not have the confidence and trust of your patients, that results in people having worse health outcomes. So in the interest of our constituents’ health, I urge the government to end this contract.”
Another MP known to oppose the company is Clive Lewis, a vocal supporter of Burnham’s ascension to Downing Street. “By taking on contracts across the NHS, policing, defense, and other public services, Palantir followed a coordinated strategy to embed themselves deeper and deeper into the British state,” he tells WIRED. “This leaves us dangerously exposed to the whims of a shady spy tech company that operates under the laws of the US, not our own.”
But on the other side, there are plenty of politicians and advisors close to Burnham who quietly advocate for the firm’s work in the UK. One of those is Varun Chandra, the man chiefly in charge of maintaining the relationship between Westminster and Big Tech, who has been kept in position by Andy Burnham.
Chandra made his name working for a corporate intelligence turned venture capital firm called Hakluyt When Chandra rose to managing partner of the company at only 34, he became the first person to do so who had not worked for the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service. Shortly after taking the helm, he launched Hakluyt Capital, a venture capital investment fund fronted by the company with numerous investments in and around AI.
Chandra plays a critical role for the British government in dealing with the US and MAGA. During Sir Keir Starmer’s visit to Washington in 2025, Michael Ellam, a senior civil servant in the Cabinet Office, told the UK’s then-ambassador to the US that Chandra was better “stylistically” than a career diplomat like himself when dealing with the decision-makers in Trump’s circle.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick singled Chandra out for praise upon his promotion, saying the adviser played an “essential” role in the US trade deal reached in 2025. Meanwhile, the New Statesman has reported that Chandra holds a particularly strong rapport with Stephen Miller, the White House’s controversial homeland security adviser.
Chandra also appears to be a point man in managing Palantir.
Joe Lonsdale, a Palantir cofounder who has remained close to those in charge of the firm, dined with Chandra in December 2024. Shortly after, Lonsdale told The Shawn Ryan Show podcast that his friends working for Keir Starmer were fully bought into the DOGE-adjacent viewpoints that Palantir has thrived off in the US.
“I was with someone [in] Keir Starmer’s government, which I have some issues with over in the UK, they’re really hard left. Even people out there [are] like, they know they have to cut their bureaucracies. Bureaucracies are like these cancers, man.”
Elsewhere, the Financial Times have revealed a number of conflict of interests involving civil servants and Palantir, including that the Department for Health’s permanent secretary worked for Carnall Farrar, a consortium partner of Palantir’s, while it bid on the NHS data platform contract, forcing her to recuse herself.
Palantir’s UK CEO Louis Mosley (the grandson of Britain’s most prominent fascist, Sir Oswald Mosley) has vocally criticized Palantir’s opponents, accusing them of putting politics before performance. He was quoted as saying “If NATO went to war, it would go to war using Palantir.”
Influential Labour voices have begun to defend the company, including Lord Spellar, a former defense minister under Tony Blair, who said Starmer’s government was “quite right to resist attempts to … demonize individual companies,” in respect to Palantir.
Outside campaigners are also putting pressure on Burnham. Campaigning journalists at Democracy for Sale have revealed little use of Palantir’s software within the NHS, aiding a concerted effort by activists to focus the campaign against Palantir on competence rather than ethics.
“The initial campaign was focused around the company’s ethical issues, but we found that it didn’t have the success we were hoping for,” one campaigner tells WIRED. “By focusing on competence we’ve found a lot more success, and by targeting the contract break.”
Donald Campbell, director of advocacy at Foxglove, tells WIRED that the decision over the NHS contract would be pivotal to the future path of the new government.
“Andy Burnham needs to make a clean break with Keir Starmer by putting an end to Trump backing Big Tech’s influence over the British government,” says Campbell.
“Palantir’s lavishly funded lobbying and influence operation has led to a catalog of apparent conflicts of interest among government personnel. Story after story has emerged where senior civil servants or politicians, who are meant to hold Palantir to account, have instead held alarmingly cozy relationships with the company.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson told WIRED: “As per standard practice, this contract will be reviewed ahead of the February 2027 break clause, but it is clear that thousands more patients are benefitting from the NHS Federated Data Platform every month, including through the reduction in the number of unnecessary days spent in hospital after treatment.” Palantir did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
As of today, Burnham has still stayed quiet about Britain’s future relationship with Palantir. Very soon, silence won’t be an option. A ticking clock begins when Parliament resumes in September, MPs will continue pressure on the new Prime Minister to break the contract, and coordinated opposition at Labour’s upcoming party conference in Liverpool, where Burnham will speak to members for the first time as party leader, and Mosley is expected to make his case at fringe events and parties with Labour’s great and good.
No matter what, an overall ban on Palantir appears highly unlikely. While British law does allow it, the move would be unprecedented and could have major implications for Britain’s military, which has an active relationship with the company—and a reckoning in the country’s relationship with the US, too.
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