The UK Government Faces a Reckoning Over Palantir

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 advisers 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.”