Palantir among arms giants snapping up ex-Tory defence ministers
Exclusive: As Trump arrives in Britain, we find a massive "unchecked revolving door" between UK government and defence industry
Once, as Oscar Wilde famously quipped, is unfortunate. Twice is careless.
And so Donald Trump is back in Britain again this week on another state visit, six years from his last.
Among the issues Starmer is set to discuss with the US president is defence: Britain will spend record sums next year, with almost £40 billion going directly to arms companies.
And how are defence contractors preparing for the potential of fresh, bumper contracts? By poaching top staff from the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
Democracy for Sale has found that in the past year alone more than 30 former Conservative defence ministers and senior civil servants have taken lucrative private sector jobs in the booming defence industry.
Palantir, the spy-tech firm run by Trump donor Peter Thiel, has snapped up top brass from the MoD as have almost a dozen other major defence contractors.
Spotlight on Corruption’s Sue Hawley warned that this unchecked ‘revolving door’ between government and the private sector could lead to “bad deals for the taxpayer” because of “the real risk of major conflicts of interest”.
Amongst other things, our exclusive analysis, based on public records published by Advisory Council on Business Appointments (ACOBA), the MoD and the government’s contracts portal, found:
At least 34 former ministers, senior officials and military officers have moved into defence jobs since Labour’s election victory.
Five former Tory defence ministers now work in industry. Among them is James Heappey, who presided over the Afghan data breach that put 100,000 lives at risk.
Palantir has been on a hiring spree, snapping up a former defence minister, an ex-permanent secretary, and a former MoD director general.
Lord Frank Petitgas, a Tory donor, Sunak adviser and recent peer, has taken a post at Palantir rival Quantexa, an AI firm with its own portfolio of government contracts.
BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin and Babcock are among almost a dozen defence firms that secured billions in MoD contracts last year while bolstering their ranks with direct hires from government.
All of this has happened under Labour, which swept to power promising to end cronyism and tackle the “flagrant abuse” of the revolving door.
Earlier this month, Democracy for Sale revealed that a Westminster group set up by a former Tory defence adviser collapsed after taking money from an Israeli state-owned arms company.
Today’s findings also come as a former senior British Army officer is under investigation by the MoD for helping Israeli arms giant Elbit Systems UK prepare a £2 billion contract bid he once oversaw at the ministry.
Brigadier Philip Kimber joined Elbit meetings within weeks of leaving the Army, at one point sitting out of camera view and admitting he “should not be there,” according to the Times.
Labour MP Phil Brickell, chair of the Anti-Corruption & Responsible Tax APPG told us that “this merry go round” of former ministers and officials “demonstrates, once again, how lax the rules are.”
Few companies have exploited the revolving door as aggressively as Palantir, which also has a controversial £330million data deal with the NHS.
Last month, ACOBA announced that Damien Parmenter, a senior MoD director general, had joined Palantir UK as an adviser to Louis Mosley — the firm’s UK boss and grandson of fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley.
Parmenter joins ex-defence minister Leo Docherty and the MoD’s former second permanent secretary Laurence Lee at Palantir.
Lee’s case is particularly striking. While at the MoD he met Palantir executives nine times, accepted hospitality on four occasions, and oversaw negotiations for a £25m contract for the company — a contract that remains unpublished.
Shortly after resigning, Lee approached Palantir for a job and now promotes its services to the Armed Forces as a “geo-strategic adviser.”
Beyond these hires, Palantir has also brought in the MoD’s former strategy director Polly Scully, ex-MI6 chief Sir John Sawers, Labour’s former deputy leader Lord Tom Watson and Cabinet Office procurement lead Sal Uddin. The company has now won more than £400m in public contracts across the MoD, NHS, police forces and local councils.
When approached, both the MoD and Palantir declined to comment.
The ranks of former ministers now working in defence are also continuing to grow.
James Heappey, who oversaw the cover-up of the Afghan data breach that put 100,000 lives at risk and cost taxpayers £7billion, is advising US infrastructure giant AECOM, which holds 43 live MoD contracts worth hundreds of millions.
Grant Shapps has been appointed chair of Cambridge Aerospace, a missile specialist. These moves, alongside similar gigs for Penny Mordaunt and Anne-Marie Trevelyan, mean a total of five ex-Tory defence ministers have now joined the industry since last year’s general election.
These moves expose just how weak Britain’s system of oversight is. Most hires are waved through by the MoD itself, subject only to token restrictions against lobbying or misusing insider knowledge for 12 months.
Next month Labour will scrap the widely derided ACOBA — described as “utterly pointless” by its own former chair — and split the watchdog’s functions between the civil service commission and the independent adviser on ministerial interests.
But questions remain about how the system will work and whether it will actually lead to improvements.
The policy “so far raises more questions than answers,” Spotlight on Corruption’s Hawley said, warning that it “may leave the regulation of the revolving door less transparent and still without any meaningful teeth.”
When Democracy for Sale asked how the new system will work, the Cabinet Office declined to comment.
Don’t ignore the common denominator between Peter Thiel, Peter Mandelson and Donald Trump, which is Epstein.
The government isn't in charge. The MOD isn't in charge. THE TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY IS BOSS! how can Britain remain safe and secure when the government that was thrown out of office is still running the kleptocracy of the Conservative government!? Starmer, stop being a wet willie and DO YOUR FUCKING JOB. Allowing these people to tell you what to do is not governing. It's caving. Go back to private enterprise and allow people who know how to deal with politics take the reins. This is too serious to ignore. I know you're a "nice guy" and that's the reason you shouldn't be in the job. We need people who push back hard! 2025 has changed the game plan for global economies so it should be acknowledged.