Palantir’s Mosley attacks Khan over Met veto as Labour AI policy splits

TL;DR:

• Louis Mosley, who heads Palantir in the UK and Europe, accused Sadiq Khan of “putting politics above public safety” after the London mayor blocked the company’s £50m Metropolitan Police contract, citing victims of mugging and sexual abuse by Met officers in his Times Radio attack.
• Khan’s veto has split Labour: Rosena Allin-Khan and Clive Lewis backed the decision; Business Secretary Peter Kyle, who has been lobbied by Palantir per ministerial-meeting records, called on Khan to “come out and explain” the call.
• An earlier separate Palantir contract worth less than £500,000 – under the threshold for mayoral scrutiny – is being used to scan Met officer rosters for signs of misconduct; the Met Police Federation called it a “big brother” system.

This is the follow-up to last week’s mayoral block on the £50m Met-Palantir deal, and it makes clear the story is now a political fight as much as a procurement one. Both stories together – the original veto and Palantir’s public response – sketch the shape of UK debate on US-vendor AI in public services for the next few quarters.

What Mosley actually said

On Times Radio Mosley told the Guardian: “What Londoners value is not being mugged, not being raped by a serving police officer and that’s really what the focus here should be… If we are going to politicise procurement in that way then we are going to compromise public safety.” The framing drew an “ashamed of himself” rebuke from Labour MP Stella Creasy, who said Mosley was “using the serious matter of sexual abuse by Met officers to attack the mayor of London for rejecting his company.”

Mosley also raised the consistency question: “We may work with Israel, but so does Amazon, and so does Microsoft… why do we get singled out?” Khan’s office has previously said Londoners want public money to go to companies that “share the values of our city.”

The Labour fault line

This week’s exchange exposed a real split inside Labour on US-vendor AI. Allin-Khan: “Palantir does not reflect the values of our city. We must maintain public trust and ensure that any tech partnerships truly serve the safety and rights of Londoners.” Lewis: “Other mayors and police and crime commissioners should take note and keep Palantir out of policing.” Kyle’s counterpoint – that Palantir does things “no one else does around the world at the moment, and that’s something that I am really taken with” – sits oddly alongside his “we need more British AI companies” equity-stake message.

For UK SMEs in govtech, defence-tech and policing AI, the live signal is that the £500,000 threshold for mayoral scrutiny is now politically loaded. Met’s earlier Palantir contract used that route. City Hall has now flagged framework-gaming concerns about how the extension to the £50m role was set up.

Looking forward

Expect Cabinet Office guidance on US-vendor lock-in to firm up before recess and select-committee scrutiny on AI procurement frameworks. The unresolved question is whether other Labour mayors and police and crime commissioners follow Khan’s lead – Clive Lewis explicitly called on them to. Palantir, sitting on the £330m NHS England and £240m MoD contracts, has more to lose from the precedent than from this single Met deal.