Half a Billion Pounds and a 22-Point Manifesto: Inside the Battle Over Palantir's UK Government Contracts

On April 18, 2026, Palantir Technologies posted a 22-point manifesto on X summarising CEO Alex Karp's book The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West. Within days, the post had accumulated over 33 million views [1]. It also triggered a political firestorm in the United Kingdom, where Palantir holds more than £670 million in public sector contracts covering patient health data, military operations, and police investigations [2].

The fallout has been swift: cross-party MPs calling for contract reviews, a junior health minister signalling a possible early exit from the NHS deal, and more than 229,000 people signing petitions demanding the government sever ties with the company [3]. The question now is whether ideology can — or should — override operational dependency.

What the Manifesto Actually Says

The 22 bullet points distil arguments from Karp's 320-page book, co-authored with Palantir's head of corporate affairs Nicholas Zamiska [4]. The core claims include:

• Cultural hierarchy: "Some cultures and subcultures have produced wonders," while others are "middling, and worse, regressive and harmful." The manifesto criticises the West for having "resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity," calling this a "shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism" [5].
• Silicon Valley's military obligation: "The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation." The tech sector owes a "moral debt" to the United States [4].
• AI weapons: "The question is not whether AI weapons will be built; it is who will build them." The next era of deterrence will be built on software, not nuclear arsenals [6].
• Conscription: The manifesto argues the US should reinstate a military draft [7].
• Post-war "overcorrection": The disarmament of Germany and Japan after World War Two was excessive, contributing to contemporary security vulnerabilities [5].

Philosopher Mark Coeckelbergh of the University of Vienna described the manifesto as "an example of technofascism" [8]. Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins noted the significance of these positions coming from a company "whose revenue depends on the politics it's advocating" [8]. The Spectator, by contrast, argued the manifesto "doesn't go far enough" in challenging what it characterised as Western complacency [9].

The Money: £670 Million Across UK Government

Palantir's UK footprint has grown rapidly. The company now holds contracts across multiple government departments and agencies.

Source: openDemocracy, Digital Health, Hansard

Data as of Apr 25, 2026CSV

NHS England: The largest single contract is the £330 million Federated Data Platform (FDP), awarded in November 2023 to a consortium led by Palantir with support from Accenture, PwC, NECS, and Carnall Farrar [10]. The FDP is built on Palantir's Foundry software and is designed to connect patient data across up to 240 NHS organisations, helping clinical staff coordinate care and manage resources [11].

Ministry of Defence: In December 2025, the MoD signed a £240 million contract with Palantir for data analytics supporting "strategic, tactical and live operational decision making" across UK armed forces. This three-year contract was more than three times larger than any Palantir had previously won with the MoD — and was awarded without competitive tender [12].

Police forces: Eleven police forces in England and Wales use Palantir's technology, and the Metropolitan Police has been conducting a pilot programme [2].

Financial Conduct Authority: Palantir also holds contracts with the FCA for regulatory data analysis [2].

Source: Hansard, Digital Health, openDemocracy

Data as of Apr 25, 2026CSV

The growth trajectory raises its own questions. The MoD contract in particular drew scrutiny after openDemocracy revealed that Palantir had hired four former Ministry of Defence officials in 2025, including Barnaby Kistruck, who left his role as Director of Industrial Strategy, Prosperity and Exports on August 31, 2025, and joined Palantir as Senior Counsellor nine days later on September 9 [12]. Former Conservative armed forces minister Leo Docherty was also among the hires [12].

The Political Response

The parliamentary reaction has been unusually forceful. Liberal Democrat MP Martin Wrigley, a member of the Commons science and technology select committee, called the manifesto "either a parody of a RoboCop film, or a disturbing narcissistic rant" and said Palantir's ethos was "entirely unsuited" to working on UK government projects involving sensitive personal data [13].

Liberal Democrat MP Victoria Collins described the manifesto as sounding like "the ramblings of a supervillain," adding: "A company that has such naked ideological motivations... should be nowhere near our public services" [13].

Labour MP Rachael Maskell called the post "quite disturbing" and warned that Palantir was positioning itself "at the heart of the defence revolution in the technological age" [7].

Junior Health Minister Zubir Ahmed told Westminster Hall that the NHS contract could be reassessed during a break clause scheduled for spring 2027, noting that if other providers could do the job better, "that needs to be looked at and reflected upon" [13]. The Department of Health said it was "no fan" of Palantir's leadership and described some of their US statements as "abominable" [5].

Two public petitions — one demanding an end to all Palantir public contracts, the other specifically targeting the NHS deal — have gathered 229,000 signatures combined [3]. Amnesty International UK has also campaigned under the banner "No Palantir in our NHS" [14].

Can Political Statements Actually Trigger Contract Review?

The legal framework governing this question is less clear-cut than the political rhetoric suggests. The Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED), part of the Equality Act 2010, requires public bodies to have "due regard" to eliminating discrimination, advancing equality of opportunity, and fostering good relations when procuring goods and services [15]. This obligation falls on the public body, not the private contractor. However, private organisations performing public functions are subject to the duty for those functions [15].

Procurement Policy Note 01/13 from the Cabinet Office states that equality considerations should be factored into procurement decisions where relevant, but the degree of relevance "varies depending on the individual procurement" [16]. A contract for data analytics software is not the same as a contract for social care delivery; the equality implications are less direct.

No UK government body has publicly initiated a formal procurement review of Palantir's contracts based on the manifesto. The break clause in the NHS contract provides a commercial — not ideological — mechanism for reassessment [10]. If invoked, it would trigger a competitive tender process, with previous bidders including Quantexa (with IBM) and Oracle Cerner as potential alternatives [17].

There is no direct precedent in UK law for cancelling a government contract because of a CEO's political statements. Comparable cases in allied countries have similarly not resulted in contract termination on ideological grounds alone, though reputational risk can factor into future procurement decisions.

The Operational Reality of Withdrawal

Severing ties with Palantir is simpler in principle than in practice. The NHS Federated Data Platform addresses a genuine problem: the health service's fragmented data infrastructure, where patient records, waiting lists, and resource allocation systems often cannot communicate across trust boundaries [17].

Palantir claims its software has improved NHS operations, sped up cancer diagnoses, extended Royal Navy ships' time at sea, and protected women and children from domestic violence [3]. These claims are difficult to independently verify without access to performance data, but the FDP has been rolled out across numerous NHS organisations.

However, the rollout has not been smooth. Corporate Watch's FOI-based investigation found significant resistance from NHS trusts, and some NHS users have described the platform as "awful to use" [17]. TechRadar reported pushback from staff, MPs, unions, and pressure groups over the FDP [17].

The intellectual property provisions complicate any transition. While NHS England owns the data ontology it commissioned (the Canonical Data Model), and Palantir cannot commercialise or market NHS data, the underlying Foundry platform belongs to Palantir [11]. Replacing it would require rebuilding the analytical infrastructure on a different technology stack — a process that would take years, not months.

For the Ministry of Defence, the stakes are different but equally significant. Palantir's analytics software is embedded in live operational decision-making across UK armed forces [12]. Disruption during an active contract period would affect military capability at a time of heightened geopolitical tension.

Karp's Ideological Trajectory

The manifesto did not emerge from a vacuum. Karp has been shifting his public rhetoric for several years. In 2018, he described himself as "a socialist and a progressive — but not woke" — and said he voted for Hillary Clinton [18]. By 2023, during protests at Columbia University, his language had sharpened considerably: he called the output of elite schools "a pagan religion — a pagan religion of mediocrity, and discrimination, and intolerance, and violence" [18].

In a 2023 investor presentation, Karp told shareholders that Palantir was "the first company to be completely anti-woke" [5]. He has since argued that AI technology will diminish the political influence of "highly educated, often female voters, who vote mostly Democrat" while increasing the power of working-class men [18].

Palantir was founded in 2003 by Karp and Peter Thiel with backing from In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture capital arm [8]. Thiel, a prominent supporter of Donald Trump, remains on the company's board. In 2024, Palantir announced a "strategic partnership" with Israel, expanding operations there [8].

The timing of the manifesto — posted just days before the NHS break clause became a topic of parliamentary debate — may be coincidental, but critics have suggested it reflects a calculated bet. As Disruption Banking noted, the stock market barely reacted: PLTR shares dropped just 0.34% on the first trading day after the post, suggesting Palantir's core investor base "prioritises business fundamentals over ideological debates" [19].

The DEI Debate in Context

Part of the manifesto's appeal to its supporters rests on a broader critique of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programmes in public institutions. In February 2025, the UK Health Secretary directed NHS organisations to stop recruiting for standalone DEI roles, calling them poor value for money during budget pressures [20].

The NHS Confederation pushed back, noting that annual spending on dedicated EDI roles was approximately £40 million — less than 0.03% of the NHS's annual resource budget — while the estimated annual cost of bullying, harassment, and discrimination within the NHS was £2.281 billion [21]. The Confederation argued that EDI work was "an investment not a drain," pointing to evidence that diverse workforces deliver better patient care [21].

There are no documented cases in the public record where DEI initiatives in NHS IT procurement or defence contracting have produced measurable mission failures. The criticism from figures like Karp tends to be directed at institutional culture rather than specific operational outcomes, making it difficult to assess against concrete evidence.

Palantir's Workforce

Palantir employs approximately 3,936 people globally as of 2024, a 5.38% increase from the prior year [22]. Its London office is the company's largest outside the United States, with 254 employees [22]. On Glassdoor, Palantir's equality, diversity, and inclusion rating stands at 3.2 out of 5, matching the industry average for IT companies [23]. The company does not publicly release detailed demographic breakdowns of its workforce by gender, ethnicity, or seniority, making independent comparison with sector benchmarks impossible.

What Comes Next

The decision point is the spring 2027 break clause in the NHS contract. If the government invokes it, a competitive re-tender would follow. MPs have called for "a staged exit with a re-tender for British companies to build a replacement for Palantir, and to deliver a better, long-term solution providing British sovereign capabilities" [17].

For the £240 million MoD contract, awarded without tender and running through 2028, there is no comparable exit mechanism in the near term [12].

The fundamental tension is this: Palantir's software is embedded in systems that affect patient care, military operations, and criminal investigations. The company's CEO has published views that cross-party politicians find repugnant. But UK procurement law does not provide a straightforward mechanism for terminating contracts based on a CEO's ideology, and the operational cost of rapid withdrawal would fall on the patients, service personnel, and communities who depend on these systems.

Whether the break clause produces a genuine change of provider or simply renews Palantir's position will depend on whether credible alternatives emerge — and whether the political will to act survives the pragmatic calculations of government procurement.