Critics recently accused Keir Starmer of misleading Parliament not once but twice. Starmer’s allies, meanwhile, mostly kept quiet, suggesting they too believed he’d messed up.
This all looks terrible for Starmer. And as if things weren’t bad enough, Ministry of Defence officials have also suggested Starmer broke the Ministerial Code:
There is no public record of the Palantir briefing attended by Keir Starmer and Peter Mandelson in February 2025 despite the Ministerial Code requiring Starmer to publish details of meetings with external organisations
No 10 says the event was not a meeting and did not require…
— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) April 25, 2026
Here we go again
As you can see in the image above, the thrice-disgraced Peter Mandelson also attended the meeting:
BREAKING: Starmer’s failure to disclose secret Palantir meeting arranged by Mandelson broke Ministerial Code of Conduct (via @Telegraph) #TomorrowsPapersToday https://t.co/DX8r6Nxp4O pic.twitter.com/pf7DJv6QcS
— Joe Rich (@joerichlaw) April 25, 2026
As Tory councillor Rich says, we’ve known about this dodgy Palantir deal for sometime. What Rich fails to note is that this tendency to afford Palantir secret meetings began with his own party, as the Canary reported on 3 March:
In 2019 at Downing Street Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings, and Peter Thiel – Palantir’s billionaire co-founder and chairman, met for an hour. There were no notes from this meeting. Palantir being awarded Covid contracts followed.
We added:
Starmer has continued this pattern of secret meetings. A February 2025 Washington meeting between Starmer, Peter Mandelson, and Palantir CEO Alex Karp has no notes and preceded the £240 million December 2025 contract between the Ministry of Defence and Palantir.
Palantir, named after the all-seeing orb from the Lord of the Rings, wants to see everything. But when it comes to its own meetings, it seems they prefer the lights off.
Oh, and let’s not forget all this:
Also central to this picture is Mandelson, whose lobbying firm Global Counsel worked for Palantir. It was Mandelson who introduced Starmer to Palantir CEO Alex Karp at that February 2025 Washington meeting, the one with no notes that preceded the £241 million MOD contract.
Mandelson’s own extensive contacts with Epstein are now the subject of a police investigation. Global Counsel no longer exists.
TotalUK government contracts now exceed £670 million – spanning the NHS, the Ministry of Defence, police forces, the Cabinet Office, and even the navy’s nuclear-powered submarines. The NHS contract alone is worth £330 million over seven years, giving one US company access to the health data of 67 million Britons.
Green Party leader Zack Polanski, meanwhile, said the following on 18 April:
'He was not allowed unsupervised access to former clients’
Is that why Keir Starmer had to accompany Mandelson to their secret meeting with Palantir? https://t.co/okv96wnhDk
— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) April 18, 2026
Now, it seems the mainstream media has caught up.
Finally noticing
In the piece published on Sunday 26 April, the Telegraph wrote:
Sir Keir Starmer has been accused of breaking the ministerial code by failing to declare a meeting with a client of Lord Mandelson’s lobbying firm.
The Telegraph also reported:
Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Cabinet Office minister, said the Palantir visit was “not a formal meeting”, in response to parliamentary questions from the Conservatives about why the meeting was not declared.
…
However, in response to a separate parliamentary question, Luke Pollard, the defence minister, acknowledged that it was a meeting, saying: “The Office of the UK Defence Attaché holds no record of the meeting as no formal record of the meeting was produced.”
Hypocritically, the Tories are also calling out Starmer’s sleaze. Alex Burghart (shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster) said:
A presentation by a defence contractor, attended with British military personnel, took place and was not declared. Calling it ‘not a meeting’ does not make it disappear.
Gee, we wonder where Labour got the idea to meet Palantir in secret from?
Burghart also said:
Keir Starmer has broken the ministerial code. The public deserves to know who arranged this meeting, what was discussed, and what Global Counsel’s client stood to gain.
This is what people mean when they say Britain is a one-state party. Half of the party is in opposition, opposing the bad stuff, while the other half is in power, doing the bad stuff.
Now the public has wised up to this con-job, they’ve started looking elsewhere for political representation:
POLL | Reform lead by 4pts
Ref: 25% (-1)
Grn: 21% (+1)
Con: 16% (-1)
Lab: 15% (-1)
Lib: 11% (-1)
– Seats –
SNP: 47
Plaid: 10
Poll: @FindOutNowUK, 22-23 Apr (+/- vs 15 Apr) pic.twitter.com/kkU4NcnYO5
— Stats for Lefties
(@LeftieStats) April 23, 2026
Starmer — Mr Transparency
This situation is especially bad for Starmer because of past comments like the following:
We need a transparency revolution. There should be no power without accountability, and true accountability requires transparency.
— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) February 4, 2020
When it suited him, Starmer talked about transparency. When it didn’t suit him, he turned the tape recorders off and asked aids not to take minutes.
Featured image via Cory Doctorow (Flickr)
By Willem Moore
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