Whatever is said about Tom Watson, the former deputy leader of the Labour party has a knack for landing headlines. In the past he did it at the expense of the rich and powerful – from News International, over phone hacking, to the Home Office, over its mass surveillance of our data. But his latest headline – that he has joined Palantir as a senior vice-president – has been at the expense of public confidence in the political class.
His new appointment is more than just a private career choice. It sends yet another signal to a weary public about just how far the rot in our democracy has spread.
Now, the former scourge of mass surveillance finds a surveillance company “the most interesting … on the planet”. It’s quite a journey, and one not many of us will want to take with him. Palantir does do work of real consequence. That’s rather the point. Watson says some criticism of Palantir is propaganda. Some of it is also true, which is the part he will find harder to square.
Palantir is a company built on surveillance and military targeting. Its co-founder Peter Thiel wrote in 2009 that he no longer believed freedom and democracy were compatible. He sees technology as an alternative to politics, a way to change the world without having to persuade voters, and backs private “startup cities” run by chief executives. This attitude runs through the company’s DNA. Palantir’s co-founder and chief executive, Alex Karp, has boasted that its work is there “to scare enemies and on occasion kill them”. Its software is used to target people for ICE raids in the US, and civilians in Gaza. This isn’t just another global corporation with some unsavoury corners to its business.
I can’t parse Watson’s mind or motivation. Palantir probably doesn’t hire a former deputy leader for his coding skills. But does it hire access? Access to networks across party and government, and to the doors behind which Palantir would fight to keep a £330m NHS England contract and legally challenge Sadiq Khan’s block on a £50m Metropolitan police contract?
Watson won’t be alone. He will join more than 30 former UK officials at a company that Peter Mandelson’s former lobbying firm, Global Counsel, counted as a client. Mandelson accompanied Keir Starmer to Palantir’s Washington office in 2025, while still retaining a stake in Global Counsel. The MoD has since signed a major partnership with Palantir. And none of this will have broken a single law. The rules on jobs for former ministers last only two years and have no legal force. Therein lies the problem.
Whether it’s Tony Blair and his relationship with Oracle, Mandelson and Global Counsel or Nick Clegg and his time at Meta, the section of the political class meant to oppose vested interests and promote public service appears to have switched sides.
According to the Institute for Public Policy Research’s latest findings, the main political parties, including Labour and the Liberal Democrats, have been accepting donations from wealthy individuals at an accelerating pace. The research found 72% of all £1m-plus donations from individuals since records began in 2001 had come since 2019. Sadly, none of this can be described as an aberration. Rather, it’s how the system increasingly works. Now politicians’ proximity to wealth and the “elites” who own it has fostered a growing public mistrust. One need only listen to Danny Dyer at a rally last week, calling for public ownership of water, to get a feel for that sentiment. These examples are all symptoms of the growing proximity between political power and the wealth it is supposed to hold to account.
In the recent Robin Cook memorial lecture I gave, I termed this malaise the “integrity gap”: the widening gulf between what governments and politicians say and what people believe. Every flagrant act deepens public cynicism about politics, and about the democracy that depends on public trust. This is a fact of which those around Trump are well aware. They know every allegation of presidential corruption erodes people’s willingness to defend democracy.
Thiel understands this implicitly. His vision for our society is simply not compatible with a progressive worldview. That is why a former Labour deputy leader lending his name to Palantir matters so much.
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The integrity gap will not close with better messaging. It will close only when politicians show whose side they are on. That means revolving-door rules with the force of law, and a regulator with teeth. It means capping political donations and ending second jobs in the House of Commons, while abolishing the House of Lords altogether. And it means public ownership and democratic control of the things firms such as Palantir want to run, from our health data to our water.
Those who sell access to power have made their choice. Those who oppose Thiel’s vision need to make theirs, and act on it. It’s time to pick a side.
