{"id":789608,"date":"2026-10-02T12:14:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T12:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/789608\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T12:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T12:14:11","slug":"recent-lobbyist-for-palantir-had-key-role-in-helping-andy-burnham-become-pm-palantir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/789608\/","title":{"rendered":"Recent lobbyist for Palantir had key role in helping Andy Burnham become PM | Palantir"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recent lobbyist for the controversial $450bn US tech company Palantir played a senior role in helping Andy Burnham<\/a> become prime minister, it has emerged.<\/p>\n

Martha Dalton, whose company Lodestone worked for Palantir in 2024 and 2025, campaigned for Burnham in the Makerfield byelection<\/a> that secured his return to parliament. She worked closely with his team on strategic communications and rebuttals, and was among supporters who clapped him into Downing Street in July.<\/p>\n

A protest against Palantir in Whitechapel, east London, on Thursday. Photograph: Henry Nicholls\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Lodestone, which Dalton co-founded, worked for Palantir<\/a> on projects including promoting its software at events in parliament where its engineers demonstrated AI-powered systems for use in British public services to MPs.<\/p>\n

Dalton previously worked on the autumn 2025 deputy leadership campaign for the current education secretary, Lucy Powell, a few months after Lodestone stopped working for Palantir.<\/p>\n

Her role emerged as Palantir fights to retain its \u00a3330m contract with NHS England to run the federated data platform, a national medical data system.<\/p>\n

Burnham\u2019s government is under pressure to scrap the deal<\/a>. Campaigners are angry about Palantir\u2019s work for the Israeli military in Gaza and Donald Trump\u2019s ICE immigration crackdown. They have also raised concerns, acknowledged<\/a> by NHS England\u2019s chief executive, Jim Mackey, that the benefits to public health may not be as significant as has been claimed.<\/p>\n

Health workers protest against Palantir outside the company\u2019s London headquarters on Wednesday. Photograph: Martin Godwin\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Lodestone\u2019s work for Palantir and Dalton\u2019s subsequent role with Burnham is the latest link between Labour<\/a> and the tech firm, which also works for the US and UK militaries and was co-founded by the Trump-supporting tech billionaire Peter Thiel.<\/p>\n

The Labour peer Tom Watson took a full-time job lobbying for Palantir<\/a> earlier this month after a period as a member of Lodestone\u2019s \u201cstrategic advisory council\u201d. Palantir previously employed Peter Mandelson\u2019s lobbying firm, Global Counsel, before it collapsed over the former Labour trade secretary\u2019s links to Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n

Dalton wrote on her LinkedIn account that it had been \u201can absolute honour to work on Andy Burnham\u2019s campaign to become Labour leader and prime minister\u201d. She took six weeks\u2019 unpaid leave from Lodestone to spend time in Makerfield \u201csupporting on strategic comms and rebuttals\u201d.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Lodestone said: \u201cShe had no contact with clients during that time and did so because she believes Andy Burnham is the best person to lead the Labour party and the country. Lodestone had previously worked with Palantir on various projects \u2013 all focused on helping them to explain their technology to those who rightly hold them to account.\u201d<\/p>\n

Palantir\u2019s chief executive, Alex Karp. Photograph: Andrew Thomas\/NurPhoto\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

Health workers who want ministers to scrap Palantir\u2019s NHS deal protested at the Labour party conference in Liverpool on Tuesday. Labour members had earlier tabled a motion calling for the deal to be axed, claiming Palantir was \u201cfacing numerous allegations of involvement in serious breaches of human rights\u201d, citing its development of technology for Israel\u2019s military.<\/p>\n

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Palantir\u2019s executive vice-president for the UK and Europe, Louis Mosley, has said its technology was used to locate hostages but not to identify military targets in Gaza. That appears to contradict an earlier statement by the firm\u2019s chief executive, Alex Karp, who was challenged last year by a protester alleging \u201cPalantir kills Palestinians\u201d in Gaza. He replied: \u201cMostly terrorists, that\u2019s true.\u201d<\/p>\n

Palantir\u2019s fortunes in the UK are intertwined with the Labour government. A break clause in the NHS England contract looms in February 2027. The Labour mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is also in a legal battle with Palantir<\/a> after he blocked the Metropolitan police from awarding it a \u00a350m contract to supply AI tools to assist criminal investigations. The firm also has a \u00a3240m contract with the Ministry of Defence and has been selling its services to other police forces and councils.<\/p>\n

Mosley recently said that people who don\u2019t recognise the positive impact the firm\u2019s technology has on cutting treatment waiting times and speeding up hospital discharges were suffering from \u201cPalantir derangement syndrome\u201d.<\/p>\n

Tom Brake, the chief executive of Unlock Democracy, a not-for-profit campaign group, said candidates should observe Cabinet Office advice on secondments before adding volunteers or secondees to their campaign teams.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis requires successful secondees to declare relevant outside interests, clarify that potential conflicts will be explored and ensure appropriate mitigations are put in place,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

A Labour spokesperson said: \u201cThere are robust rules and procedures to manage any potential conflicts, whether that be in government or in campaigns, and those were followed.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Palantir spokesperson said: \u201cLodestone has worked with us on a range of projects to explain how our software is used to deliver public services \u2013 for example parliamentary events that enable MPs to see demonstrations of our software and ask our engineers questions around data privacy and security.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A recent lobbyist for the controversial $450bn US tech company Palantir played a senior role in helping Andy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":789609,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-789608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789608","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=789608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/789609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}