It’s unspeakably idiotic of Starmer’s government to continue handing public data and infrastructure to Palantir right now. But the government is either too stupid or too corrupt to see it. Or both.

The Miami-based company, co-founded by the billionaire Donald Trump donor Peter Thiel, has been appointed for a three-month trial, paying more than £30,000 a week to analyse the FCA’s vast “data lake”, which could lead to a full procurement of an AI system. The deal is part of the FCA’s drive to use digital intelligence to better focus resources on rule-breaking among the 42,000 financial services firms it regulates, from major banks to crypto exchanges. There was only one other, unnamed competitor for the contract. Palantir already has more than £500m in UK public deals, including with the NHS, military and police. The contract has prompted warnings of “very significant privacy concerns”. Palantir is expected to apply its AI system, known as Foundry, to huge quantities of information held by the watchdog, including case intelligence files marked highly sensitive; information on so-called problem firms; reports from lenders about proven and suspected frauds; and data about the public, including consumer complaints to the financial ombudsman. The data includes recordings of phone calls, emails and trawls of social media posts, the Guardian understands. The FCA is one of several UK agencies which aim to stop financial crimes that underpin harms such as the drug trade and human trafficking. The deal has raised concerns inside the FCA. One source said: “Once Palantir understands how we detect money-laundering threats, how do we know that they are ethically reliable enough not to go to share that information?”