{"id":774543,"date":"2026-09-18T09:08:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T09:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/774543\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T09:08:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T09:08:13","slug":"former-labour-deputy-leader-tom-watson-joins-palantir-tom-watson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/774543\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson joins Palantir | Tom Watson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another former government minister has been hired by a controversial US AI company, this time Palantir, which has appointed Andy Burnham\u2019s former ministerial colleague Tom Watson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Labour peer and former deputy leader will operate alongside Palantir\u2019s UK and Europe chief executive, Louis Mosley, as the company attempts to fend off pressure on Burnham\u2019s government to axe its \u00a3330m NHS contract<\/a>. It is also fighting Sadiq Khan in court over the Labour London mayor\u2019s block on a \u00a350m contract to use its AI in Metropolitan police investigations<\/a>. Palantir also wants to win more public sector work in the UK, where it already has an annual turnover<\/a> of \u00a3427m.<\/p>\n

The company was co-founded by the Trump-supporting billionaire Peter Thiel and provides AI-powered software to the Israeli military and the White House\u2019s ICE immigration crackdown<\/a>, leading to a public and political backlash against its deepening involvement in British public services. Alex Karp, its chief executive, said: \u201cThis is just the latest chapter of Tom\u2019s forty-year fight for better public services. We are fortunate to have him guide us as we help the British government to deliver for the British public.\u201d<\/p>\n

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His job will be, in part, to \u201cdeepen the social and economic value its work creates through better British public services, jobs and skills\u201d, Palantir<\/a> said.<\/p>\n

Since stepping down from parliament in 2019, Watson has been an adviser to the gambling and music industries and, since 2024, he has been a part-time adviser to Palantir, including accompanying Mosley at Labour party conferences. He was a defence minister and a minister for digital engagement in Gordon Brown\u2019s government. Palantir has a \u00a3240m contract with the Ministry of Defence.<\/p>\n

The move is just the latest example of a revolving door between British politics and big tech. After the former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg spent nearly seven years earning millions working for Mark Zuckerberg at Meta<\/a>, the former prime minister Rishi Sunak last year took jobs with Anthropic and Microsoft<\/a> and the former chancellor George Osborne started working for OpenAI<\/a>. Keir Starmer\u2019s AI adviser, Matt Clifford, also joined Anthropic this month<\/a>. He tried to retain the chair of a government science and tech research body, but quit<\/a> under pressure over conflicts of interest.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe revolving door is proving very fruitful for big tech,\u201d said Tom Brake, the chief executive of Unlock Democracy, a not-for-profit campaign group. \u201cThe only surefire way to stop tech companies benefiting from privileged information acquired by ministers or senior civil servants is to introduce an enforceable five-year ban on taking up industry posts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Watson said he was \u201cterrifically excited\u201d by the new role as Palantir\u2019s senior vice-president and highlighted two of the contracts that are in dispute when he said he wanted to help Palantir speed up NHS diagnosis, treatment and discharge from hospitals and enable \u201cour police to crack crimes and root out corruption\u201d. Palantir said Watson had taken a leave of absence from the House of Lords and had relinquished his parliamentary pass while working for Palantir in London.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Another former government minister has been hired by a controversial US AI company, this time Palantir, which has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":774544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-774543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}