[Tubby Isaacs]

Strong defence of the Palantir NHS contract here by a former very serious NHS IT manager.

He's very sure that there's no alternative to it, at least not before the break in the contract can be exercised. He says data protection arguments are mistaken anyway, akin to thinking that using Word means that Bill Gates has your data. I've great frustration with the way these sort of issues get pushed now (normally with Jolyon Maugham and a predictable group of backbench MPs in the vicinity) with no sense of trade offs. If a load more people die because of bad data, that's not on them- they'll probably trace the problem back to Wes Streeting's donors anyway.

I do think there is a stronger case with new Palantir contracts though. And I think pushing longer term independence from US tech is a sensible idea.

https://www.bartlettdata.co.uk/post/blog-coming-soon

[The Weeping Angel]

Yeah, Starmer gets easy media coverage.

This "scandal" was all about process. That's why people are concentrating on it. If the argument were that Starmer had to resign for appointing Mandelson, that would have been made months ago, when it wasn't. And lots of media types said it was a good appointment, so calling for resignation over it would be a stretch even for them.

I have no idea what Starmer has done to Stephen Bush.

Bush dislikes Starmer full stop, so nothing he ever does is right.