“The growth sucks.” That’s how Alex Karp, the CEO and co-founder of Palantir Technologies, described the company’s performance in Europe. He said this on August 3 to shareholders, while his colleagues defended an “incredible” quarter in the United States.

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Palantir's response

Follow The Money and its media partners presented Palantir with the findings of this investigation, along with 14 detailed questions. Palantir has not responded to any of them. Instead, the firm forwarded a statement from a spokesperson: “A serious debate is needed on how Europe safeguards its technological sovereignty. Technological sovereignty must ultimately be measured by who controls the data, the decisions and the mission: not just by the nationality of the software provider.” According to Palantir, control over data (and what is done with it) belongs to the customer.

The statement adds: “Since 2011, Palantir has been working with democratically-elected European governments and institutions to increase hospital capacity, accelerate cancer diagnoses, safely resettle refugees, combat organized crime, protect victims of domestic violence, and respond more quickly to floods and other emergencies.” It also notes that more than 20% of Palantir’s employees work in Europe and that the company helps European businesses compete and grow in various sectors, such as aerospace, manufacturing and life sciences. Palantir further states that it supports European governments in protecting their national security, including in Ukraine.

In a previous response to this same media consortium, Palantir denied accusations of its involvement in human rights violations.

Shevaun Haviland argues PM is right to revisit Labour’s EU red lines as current trading relationship is bad for business

Repairing the economic damage of Brexit should be the top priority for Andy Burnham as he reconsiders Labour’s red lines on EU membership, the head of one of Britain’s leading business groups has said.

Shevaun Haviland, the director general of the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), said she welcomed the prime minister reopening the Brexit battle lines despite the uncertainty it could create, arguing that the UK’s current trading relationship with the EU was bad for business.

Larry, il celebre gatto che dal 2011 vive a Downing Street, era stato avvistato nei giorni scorsi con una cicatrice che aveva fatto crescere molta apprensione sui social. Il governo britannico ha quindi voluto rassicurare tutti i cittadini inglesi circa il gatto noto nel Regno Unito come “Chief Mouser Larry“.

“Il nostro cacciatore di topi, Larry, è tornato a Downing Street dopo un piccolo intervento chirurgico ed è in via di ripresa. Sta molto meglio, ma procede con cautela, un passo alla volta. Siamo grati ai veterinari per le loro cure eccezionali” ha spiegato in un post pubblicato su X l’ufficio del premier Andy Burnham.

Il gatto è arrivato a Downing Street è arrivato dalla Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, dietro la volontà dell’allora premier David Cameron. Il suo ingresso ufficiale nella sede del governo inglese avvene, infatti, il 15 settembre 2011.

Negli anni il gatto è diventato protagonista anche di alcune particolari incursioni durante le visite di capi di stato stranieri. Nel 2019, durante una visita del presidente degli Stati Uniti Donald Trump, è comparso nella fotografia ufficiale sulla soglia di Downing Street e poche ore dopo è stato visto dormire proprio sotto l’auto blindata del presidente americano.

L'articolo “È tornato a Downing Street dopo un piccolo intervento chirurgico ed è in via di ripresa”: l’aggiornamento di Downing Street sul celebre gatto Larry proviene da Il Fatto Quotidiano.

Ola Källenius says it will ‘weaken the industry on both sides’ ahead of act intended to counter non-EU competition

Locking the UK out of the EU’s flagship industrial “Made in Europe” legislation would amount to a “deliberate choice” by EU leaders to “hurt” the car industry across the bloc, the head of Mercedes-Benz has said.

Speaking in his capacity as president of the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA), Ola Källenius said such a move would “weaken the industry on both sides”.

Prime minister reiterates UK backing after the Ukrainian president’s latest round of difficulties with Donald Trump

Andy Burnham will host Volodymyr Zelenskyy at Downing Street on Wednesday as the UK seeks to further underline its support for the Ukrainian president, in contrast to his difficulties with Donald Trump.

The UK prime minister said his message to Zelenskyy and his country would be: “We are with you for as long as it takes.”

The prime minister is correct to judge the time is right to push for closer links with the EU. The political risk is far outweighed by the potential rewards

The German philosopher GWF Hegel famously evoked the owl of Minerva when discussing the historical wisdom that comes through hindsight. This autumn, she has flown tirelessly over the landscape of British politics. Party conference season was dominated by conflicting Labour and Conservative accounts of the 1970s and 80s. And a decade after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, Andy Burnham this week abandoned all equivocation over the damage – economic but also strategic – that resulted from that decision.

Having declared that it is time to “face up to the reality that Brexit has done more harm than good”, Mr Burnham told the House of Commons on Monday that it would be a “dereliction of duty” not to explore all options for closer relations with Brussels. Though he confirmed that in this parliament he will honour the red lines in Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour manifesto, all bets will subsequently be off.

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As he charges head first into the Brexit debate, Andy Burnham resembles no one so much as Donald Trump, says Prof James Alexander: cause a stir via wild assertions, the better to give cover to what you really want to do.

The post Brexit Does Not Mean Brexit appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Russian meddling probably didn’t affect the referendum result – but the Kremlin’s motives for wanting to undermine the EU still matter

Russian territorial aggression against Ukraine didn’t feature much in the Brexit referendum campaign. It made headlines briefly when Boris Johnson blamed Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea on the European Union.

According to the Vote Leave frontman, Vladimir Putin’s land grab was a consequence of Brussels making foreign policy “on the hoof” and having “pretensions to running a defence policy”.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

Ken McCallum says Kremlin attempted to influence vote through social media and TV reports but had little impact

Russia did try to interfere in the Brexit referendum through social media and television reports, the head of MI5 said on Tuesday, but he added that did not mean the Kremlin had any impact on the result.

Ken McCallum endorsed comments by Andy Burnham, who raised the issue over the past two days, though he said continuing to debate it risked giving the Kremlin a needless propaganda victory.

Amid renewed speculation about an early General Election, now is the time to look at whom to put money on as the next party leaders, says Mark Littlewood in his latest Political Betting column for the Daily Sceptic.

The post Who Will the Next Party Leaders Be? appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

He argued there was no evidence to suggest the result of the Brexit vote had been swayed as a result of the effort

• Andy Burnham promises ‘serious dialogue’ over UK’s relationship with EU

Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson, has said he does not agree with his colleague Suella Braverman’s assertion that black people cannot be English.

Asked about her views in an interview on Sky News, Yusuf said:

In my view Ashley Cole is the best English fullback in history, and I won’t take any other position. So in my view, Ashley Cole is English. I think the argument that he’s not English doesn’t hold water with me.

Nasser Hussain, who I grew up watching when I went to the cricket, the idea that those people aren’t English is an alien concept to me.

I would respectfully disagree with people, who make the opposite argument.

To say I’m English is to take a ‘laissez-faire, anything-goes’ attitude to ethnicity, citizenship and identity. It also denies me my Asian heritage. The liberals (many of them in today’s Conservative party) take this cosmopolitan approach to Englishness. They’re terrified of being called racist so they say that anyone, as long as they’re born here, can be English.

I take the conservative approach. Englishness is an ethnicity. There have been English people for centuries and we need to recognise this more if we are to start taking a more muscular approach to citizenship and nationality. And no, it’s not racist to say this.

PM hails next month’s ‘reset’ summit as first step to closer ties, but tensions over trade may prove problematic

Andy Burnham has promised a “serious dialogue” over the UK’s future place in Europe, saying the existing relationship is “not good enough” as he framed next month’s Brussels summit as a possible first step to EU membership.

The prime minister said Britain must take a “clear-eyed rational look” at its long-term relationship with the bloc to boost economic growth and control immigration, which needed to go beyond Labour’s existing red lines.

A heat pump subsidy scheme launched by Ed Miliband just nine months ago is facing cuts to help fund defence as the public continues to reject the technology and the quiet Net Zero rollback marches on.

The post Heat Pump Subsidies to be Scaled Back to Fund Defence appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Prime minister has reopened the debate over whether Russia sought to influence the 2016 referendum

Andy Burnham unexpectedly reopened an old Brexit debate when he said he had been told after becoming prime minister that Russia had interfered in the 2016 EU referendum.

It was a contentious issue in the second half of the previous decade, but one that had largely been forgotten about as the UK finally adjusted to the reality of leaving the EU. Now Burnham’s comments have given the topic a fresh impetus.

UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham said Russia interfered in the 2016 referendum that took Britain out of the European Union, in podcast excerpts released on 11 October, the Associated Press reported. His remarks are believed to be the first time a British prime minister has publicly acknowledged such meddling.

Russia’s information war keeps running through Europe’s ballots. German security sources said in August that Moscow was escalating disinformation before state elections, and Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation found more than 200 Russian fake news sites aimed at France last year.

One question, one clear answer

Burnham told The Rest Is Politics podcast that he asked his advisers whether Russia had interfered in the 2016 vote. He asked after taking office in July.

“I’ve had the clear answer that yes, there was,” he said.

He argued that such things must now be put clearly on the record. He did not say how Russia interfered or offer evidence, and Moscow has long denied interfering in foreign votes.

Burnham said he had discussed Russian interference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Berlin the previous week. “You know he was saying to me that the AfD are clearly linked to Russia, funded I believe,” Burnham said, referring to Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany party. Putting such interference on the record would help “voters in Germany and France understand that some of this politics is instigated via our enemies, namely Russia,” he added.

Years of silence

In 2020, Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee found that the government had actively avoided investigating whether Russia meddled in the referendum. The report noted open-source signs of Russian attempts to sway the Brexit campaign. The government, it said, had never looked for hard evidence.

The government rejected the committee’s call for a review.

“We have seen no evidence of successful interference in the EU Referendum,” it said.

That same year, London said Russian actors had almost certainly tried to interfere in the 2019 general election. The government said they did it by amplifying leaked UK-US trade documents online.

From 2019 to 2016

Three weeks ago, Burnham stopped short of this. At the UN General Assembly on 22 September, he said the Kremlin spends around £1.3 billion each year on manipulating information. That is roughly $1.7 billion at recent exchange rates. He cited evidence that Russian agencies tried to interfere in the 2019 general election, but he did not mention 2016.

In the same speech, he said Britain had already helped Moldova protect its elections from Russian interference.

Andy Burnham will say that failing to pursue a closer relationship with the EU would be a "dereliction of duty" in a major Commons address today, following his comments blaming Russia for interfering in the Brexit vote.

The post Burnham to Say it’s His “Duty” to Pursue Closer EU Ties appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

The prime minister has said Russia interfered in the 2016 Brexit vote in an interview with The Rest Is Politics podcast as he warned voters in France and Germany about Moscow-backed efforts to influence their politics.

Burnham is the first British prime minister to say openly there is evidence of Russian interference in the referendum a decade ago, and said last month that Britain could consider rejoining the European Union in the future

The prime minister tells MPs the next summit with the EU will be held on 20 November

Burnham to urge MPs to embrace closer ties with EU

Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson, is speaking now. He started his speech with an account of a 73-year-old woman dying in North Wales after having to wait 23 hours for an ambulance, and he sought to link this to immigration.

He said:

The Royal College of Emergency Medicine estimates that 15,000 people across Britain died last year due to excess wait times for emergency treatment. That’s 300 people a week, 300 lives destroyed, 300 families devastated.

And that number has increased tenfold over the last decade. This is a moral outrage, and it is a direct result of decisions made by Tory and Labour governments.

I don’t think that’s because he wants to have a fight over the European Union. I think that’s because he knows what we’re talking about today impacts hard in what is known as the red wall.