Andy Burnham now has to decide whether to rip up a £330 million Palantir NHS contract he once kept out of Greater Manchester

[Orca]

The UK government faces a genuine reckoning over its growing dependence on Palantir, the American data analytics firm co-founded by Peter Thiel, with the decision now landing on the desk of Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who previously kept the company out of Greater Manchester during his time there before becoming PM. At stake is a Palantir NHS contract reportedly worth £330 million, part of a much broader set of Palantir contracts that already span the NHS, policing, defence and other public services across the UK.

Labour MP Clive Lewis, a vocal Burnham supporter, has been among the sharpest critics of the company's expanding footprint, arguing that by taking on contracts across the NHS, policing, defence and other public services, Palantir followed a coordinated strategy to embed themselves deeper into the British state. Lewis went further in warning about the risks that dependency now creates, describing the exposure as coming from a shady spy tech company that operates under the laws of the US, not our own, rather than being accountable to UK oversight.

The political dimension is complicated further by Varun Chandra, who maintains close relations between Westminster and major US technology companies and was previously a managing partner at Hakluyt. US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has praised Chandra's role as essential in 2025 US trade negotiations, and Chandra reportedly holds a strong rapport with Stephen Miller, an adviser to Trump on homeland security, illustrating just how tightly UK reliance on Palantir is now entangled with the UK's broader diplomatic and trade relationship with the United States.

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