Palantir Lobbyist Played Senior Role in Burnham's Rise to No 10

A lobbyist whose firm worked for Palantir in 2024 and 2025 served as a senior operative in Andy Burnham's campaign to become prime minister, a connection that lands as his government weighs the fate of the company's £330m NHS England contract.

Martha Dalton, co-founder of the firm Lodestone, campaigned for Burnham in the Makerfield byelection that returned him to parliament. She worked closely with his team on strategic communications and rebuttals, taking six weeks of unpaid leave from Lodestone to do so. She was among the supporters who clapped him into Downing Street in July.

Dalton's involvement, first reported as the NHS contract fight intensifies, adds another thread to the web connecting Labour and the $450bn US tech company co-founded by Trump-supporting billionaire Peter Thiel. Palantir works for the US and UK militaries, the Israeli military in Gaza, and Donald Trump's ICE immigration crackdown — all cited by campaigners demanding the government scrap the deal.

Lodestone's work for Palantir included promoting its software at events in parliament, where Palantir engineers demonstrated AI-powered systems for British public services to MPs. Dalton previously worked on Lucy Powell's autumn 2025 deputy leadership campaign, a few months after Lodestone stopped working for Palantir.

She was unabashed about her political work. "It had been an absolute honour to work on Andy Burnham's campaign to become Labour leader and prime minister," Dalton wrote on LinkedIn, describing her time in Makerfield as "supporting on strategic comms and rebuttals."

A Lodestone spokesperson defended the arrangement. "She 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," the spokesperson said. "Lodestone had previously worked with Palantir on various projects — all focused on helping them to explain their technology to those who rightly hold them to account."

The Labour pipeline to Palantir runs wider. Labour peer Tom Watson took a full-time lobbying job for the firm earlier this month after a stint on Lodestone's "strategic advisory council." Palantir previously employed Peter Mandelson's lobbying firm, Global Counsel, before it collapsed over the former Labour trade secretary's links to Jeffrey Epstein.

The stakes are concrete. Palantir is fighting to retain the NHS England contract to run the federated data platform, a national medical data system. Campaigners' concerns extend beyond ethics to value: NHS England chief executive Jim Mackey has acknowledged the benefits to public health may not be as significant as claimed. A break clause in the contract looms in February 2027. Health workers pushing ministers to scrap the deal protested at the Labour party conference in Liverpool on Tuesday, after party members tabled a motion claiming Palantir was "facing numerous allegations of involvement in serious breaches of human rights," citing its technology for Israel's military.

Palantir's own executives have sent mixed signals on Gaza. Louis Mosley, the firm's executive vice-president for the UK and Europe, has said its technology located hostages but did not identify military targets. That appears to contradict chief executive Alex Karp, who was challenged last year by a protester alleging "Palantir kills Palestinians" in Gaza. He replied: "Mostly terrorists, that's true."

Mosley recently dismissed critics of the firm's record on cutting treatment waiting times and speeding hospital discharges as suffering from "Palantir derangement syndrome."

The company's UK fortunes are intertwined with Labour at every level. Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, is in a legal battle with Palantir after blocking the Metropolitan police from awarding it a £50m contract for AI tools to assist criminal investigations. The firm also holds a £240m Ministry of Defence contract and sells services to other police forces and councils.

Tom Brake, chief executive of the campaign group Unlock Democracy, said candidates should observe Cabinet Office advice on secondments before adding volunteers or secondees to campaign teams. "This requires successful secondees to declare relevant outside interests, clarify that potential conflicts will be explored and ensure appropriate mitigations are put in place," he said.

A Labour spokesperson said: "There are robust rules and procedures to manage any potential conflicts, whether that be in government or in campaigns, and those were followed." A Palantir spokesperson said: "Lodestone has worked with us on a range of projects to explain how our software is used to deliver public services — for example parliamentary events that enable MPs to see demonstrations of our software and ask our engineers questions around data privacy and security."

With the February 2027 break clause approaching and party members in open revolt over the NHS deal, Burnham's government faces a decision that will define its relationship with one of the world's most valuable — and most contested — technology companies.