Tom Watson leaves the industry body UK Music to become a Palantir vice president

Tom Watson, the former Labour deputy leader who has chaired UK Music for six years, is joining Palantir UK as a senior vice president. He announced it himself on X on Friday 18 September, calling the company the most interesting on the planet and saying it does work of real consequence.

Palantir is not a neutral destination. Founded 20 years ago by the billionaire Peter Thiel, it has financial backing from the CIA and counts the US and Israeli militaries, ICE, the FBI and the NHS among its clients. Watson acknowledged the company has challenges and said that while some of the criticism aimed at it is propaganda, there are legitimate questions about large technology companies and sovereign control.

The reaction from Westminster was immediate. The Green MP Sian Berry said the appointment was "yet another example of the corrosive revolving door between politics and big business lobbying that has no place in public life," argued the company has no business in the NHS or other public services, and said Watson had been hired to lobby his friends in the Labour government. The same charge came back at him repeatedly on social media, where the gap between six years talking about culture and community and a job at a US defence and surveillance contractor was the recurring point.

His arrival at UK Music was contested too. The organisation had to defend the 2020 appointment after industry-wide criticism, and a Times report at the time said his hiring had alarmed the British Phonographic Industry, whose members account for 85 per cent of UK music sales and which is among the ten music groups with directors on the UK Music board. The concerns covered how much he knew about the industry, his reported salary, and the controversies of his parliamentary career, including his support for false child sexual abuse allegations disproved by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in early 2020, after which there were calls to block his peerage.

Palantir set out the terms of the move. Louis Mosley, its head of UK and Europe, welcomed Watson as bringing a deep understanding of how AI is changing the ways the state can help people in Britain, where he said more than one in six of the company's staff are based. Mosley added that Watson has surrendered his parliamentary pass and that his contract prevents him returning to the Lords as an active peer while he works there. Watson said part of his job will be correcting false information while working with engineers on privacy, security and sovereignty.

No successor at UK Music has been named, which leaves the body that lobbies government on behalf of the British music industry without a chair at a point when its members are arguing over grassroots funding, from the Liveline Fund for venues and promoters to the ticket levy Sub Focus has adopted for arena shows. There is one grace note in his file: when Watson resigned as Labour's general election co-ordinator, his letter to Ed Miliband recommended the Castleton duo Drenge, who later said they were not totally overjoyed about the mention.