London May Day March - Photo: Workers' Weekly

On May 7, local and regional elections were held across Britain. Parliamentary elections were held in Scotland and Wales, while in England, elections were held in 136 local councils, covering over 5,000 council seats and several mayoralties. Taken together, the elections signalled a marked weakening of Britain's two traditional Westminster parties: Labour lost ground across England, Scotland and Wales, while the Conservatives continued to struggle, especially in English local government and in the devolved nations.

In England, both Labour and the Conservatives suffered heavy net losses: Labour lost 1,496 seats, falling to 1,068 councillors, while the Conservatives dropped 563 seats to 801. Meanwhile, Reform UK gained 1,451 seats to reach 1,453 councillors and taking control of 14 councils. The Greens rose by 411 seats to 587 and gained five councils, while the Liberal Democrats added 155 seats to reach 844; twenty-three councils moved to no overall control. National projections placed Reform at roughly 26-27 percent, the Greens between 14 and 18 percent, and both Labour and the Conservatives clustered in the high teens to around 20 percent. In London Labour remained the largest party but lost heavily as the Greens gained control of local authorities for the first time and won mayoralties in Hackney, Lewisham and Waltham Forest; Reform also secured a borough mayoralty.

In Scotland, the SNP remained the largest party in Holyrood but fell short of a majority with 58 seats in the 129-seat parliament. Labour and Reform each took 17 seats, the Scottish Greens reached a record 15 seats, the Conservatives secured 12 and the Liberal Democrats 10. First Minister John Swinney is negotiating support with the Greens for a minority-government programme, yet the arithmetic now reflects a more plural and unstable chamber and a strengthened Reform presence altering opposition dynamics.

In Wales, the new 96-member Senedd was elected by multi-member constituencies returning six members each. The Senedd result marked a historic shift: Labour was not the largest party for the first time since devolution. Plaid Cymru won 43 seats and emerged as the largest party; Reform Wales took 34 seats and became the main opposition. Labour fell to nine seats, the Conservatives to seven, the Greens to two and the Liberal Democrats to one.

The elections and their results expose that elections do not resolve political authority. Where ballots once claimed to confer mandates and restore equilibrium, May 7 essentially redistributed disaffection among a growing plurality of parties and forces. Rather than producing decisive outcomes, the results produced fragmentation, minority administrations and a proliferation of centres of influence. This is indicative of a cartel-party system in deeper crisis. Though the major parties still gatekeep access to power and represent elite interests, and the cartel survives in form, the system is decaying and descending into warring factions. Factional competition has shifted to inner-party and cross-party struggles for state institutions, producing a system that is more unstable, far from one that is more accountable.

The growth of protest or identity-based voting must not be mistaken itself as renewal. It is, rather, a popular disengagement and volatility, part of the growing disequilibrium. The reality is fragmentation without new mechanisms for popular empowerment. Voters have expressed rejection, but what is missing are modern democratic institutions that directly empower people. Ballots have dispersed power into a chaos of hung councils and minority governments reliant on expediency and shifting alliances. In short. the election outcomes are symptomatic of the need for an alternative but where the required alternative does not yet exist.

May 7 makes clear that elections alone, especially a first-past-the-post type of count, but overall a mind-set that the issue in voting is simply a matter of "choice", cannot heal a system whose core institutions concentrate power and deflect accountability. It reduces people to things to be governed, whose role is simply to vote and hand over their voice. The alternative requires new decision-making forms rooted in workplaces and communities, with mechanisms for direct empowerment and accountability, where sovereignty is vested in the people themselves.

The system is descending into disarray - and the political order it sustains cannot be repaired by more of the same. The May 7 elections did not resolve Britain's political crisis, but deepened it. Far from producing decisive mandates or restoring confidence in the party system, the results exposed a fractured polity and a cartel-party structure in terminal decline, but with people desperate for change and to be in control of their lives. In short, the crisis is beyond redemption within the existing party-dominated arrangements. What is required is not another election cycle but a determined project of democratic renewal that builds institutions where the people truly decide.

The "No Palantir in the NHS" campaign organised by Medact, Good Law Project, Amnesty International, Just Treatment, Keep Our NHS Public (KONP), and many others now reflects the current phase of the long-standing opposition in the country by the working class and people to the outsourcing of patient data to private companies that has been going on over the last 20 years. Further, this week a leaked NHS England briefing reported by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) [1] revealed that Palantir and its employees have been allowed "unlimited access" to patient data alongside reports that the government now plans legislation in the new Parliament to force hospitals and GPs to hand over their data on patients. The people's response is No Palantir in the NHS and opposing Palantir and the government's joint abuse of people's data, as well as demanding the right to privacy of patient and other data where only they can decide.

Medact [2], an organisation of health workers that fights for health justice in society, points out: "The No Palantir in the NHS campaign is a grass roots worker, patient and community campaign to remove Palantir Technologies from NHS data infrastructure. It is organised by Health Workers for a Free Palestine in collaboration with Medact and in coalition with groups such as the Good Law Project, Amnesty International and Just Treatment."

Medact continues: "Palantir is a software and AI company specialising in warfare, policing, surveillance and immigration enforcement. They are complicit in multiple human rights violations such as the genocide in Gaza, mass deportation and detentions by ICE in the US, military interventions in Iraq and discriminatory policing practices. You can read more about Palantir as a company and the concerns regarding the NHS contract in our briefing document [3]."

Also, on April 26, The Guardian pointed out, "The US spy tech company Palantir published a 'manifesto' (The Technological Republic [4]) extolling the benefits of American power and implying some cultures are inferior to others." The "manifesto" exhorted the US to reinstate a military draft, saying that "free and democratic societies" need "hard power" in order to prevail.

In fact, this 22-point "manifesto" of Palantir reads, as commentator's have said, like something out of Hitler's Mein Kampf calling for an end to the "postwar neutering" of Germany and Japan and supporting their re-arming. Alex Karp, Palantir CEO, who has increasingly framed Palantir's AI tools as central to Western military and industrial power, said, "We believe it is not hyperbolic to say that nearly all AI workflows that actually create value - especially on the battlefield - are built on Palantir," In 2025, he also declared on their AI that "Palantir is here to disrupt...and, when it's necessary, to scare our enemies and, on occasion, kill them". Under Alex Karp, Palantir has expanded into military and government contracts, including the US Department of Defence, CIA, FBI, and international clients like NATO and Israel.

The opposition to Palantir in society has continued. In the NHS, by the summer of 2025, fewer than half of health authorities in England had started using the technology amid opposition from the public and doctors. The British Medical Association (BMA) has said that its members could refuse to use parts of the system itself, citing Palantir's work with US immigration enforcement in targeting ICE raids in the US. The most recent reporting of the BMA and others still describes "patchy, limited uptake", with MPs and NHS staff saying that "only a minority of Trusts are using it meaningfully". Still there is no data on uptake. However, a 2026 Westminster debate reported on in the BMJ described the Federated Data Platform (FDP), powered by Palantir, as "awful to use" benefiting only a minority of Trusts and facing calls from MPs to be scrapped. This strongly implies that uptake remains low, even into 2026.

The opposition continues with calls for the termination of the NHS contract with Palantir Technologies.

Medact states: "We are demanding that NHS England cancel the contract with Palantir, which they could do at the upcoming contract renewal date in February 2027. We are also organising to hold our local hospitals and NHS institutions accountable and demanding that they don't implement Palantir's FDP at the local level.

"We ground our actions in the political framing of health justice, and our campaign against Palantir originated in response to the call from Palestinian health unions to cut our institutions' ties to genocide. Organising against the Palantir contract is not only a Palestine and migrant solidarity issue. The contract also represents an increase in the state's ability to surveil health data, which we know will impact marginalised patients the most. It also furthers privatisation and outsourcing of NHS services, and enables corporations to extract and profit from our health data."

Opposition and concern about the handing over of vital patient data that could go to insurance companies and government agencies, together with the massive profits originating from these failed IT projects, has continued to grow over the last 20 years. Yet successive governments of whatever shade have continued to deepen the NHS reliance on private platforms instead of consolidating NHS IT services. Why is this?

Medact points out that with the FDP, the NHS does not own the intellectual property for its key components. Palantir's global business model, it says, "relies on deep integration with client data systems". These systems are completely dependent on Palantir. However, Palantir publicly insists that the NHS - and therefore the government - "controls the data".

This whole situation points to the restructuring of the state in order to strengthen the hold of narrow vested interests with no accountability. In the case of Palantir and the government, the question is being posed as to why the government wants to outsource NHS data with Palantir, and it is being argued that the answer is as a measure to enable control of the data itself. The government cannot control the data of the NHS directly, it is argued, as it cannot force the NHS to hand over the data of patients as the system currently stands. This is in contrast to the government's abuse of pensioners' banking privacy when the government Department of Works and Pensions (DWP) was easily able to force the banks to hand over data of the bank accounts of pensioners for "tax purposes", a measure which it imposed last year.

The conclusion is being drawn that the government's continuation of handing NHS data over to Palantir goes hand in hand with handing civil, police, military and spy data services to Palantir that the government also controls centrally. This is not just a case of no-competition procurement - it can be said to be structural dependency of the state on Palantir, a consolidation of power in the hands of narrow vested interests [5]. This is happening in conjunction with the government's support of the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people, and its attacks on the right to speak out and protest against these crimes in Britain. Palantir is being embedded in the British state and with it will control all of the NHS data of patients.

This is a profound lesson for all those in the NHS, patients and people alike, as to what the government and the whole cartel party system in Westminster has in store for the NHS and society on their data. The government's plan to hand control of the NHS data - "one of the largest data bases in the world" - to Palantir must be opposed. It is unconscionable that people's data be put under the control of narrow vested interests and utilised to strengthen the police powers of the state. The rights of all to security and privacy of their patient and other personal data must be upheld by a modern society. No to Palantir in the NHS and the abuse of people's personal data! End the contracts with Palantir and other private data consortiums!

Notes
1.GPs and hospitals to be forced to share patient data as Palantir is granted "unlimited access" to identifiable information
https://www.bmj.com/content/393/bmj.s929
2.Medact brings together health workers to fight for health justice. Medact explains: "We recognise that health injustice is driven by political, social and economic conditions - we mobilise the health community to take action to change the system. History - Medact grew out of the medical peace movement. It was formed in 1992 as a merger of two organisations: the Medical Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons, and the Medical Association for the Prevention of War. After the merger, the newly-formed Medact recognised the need to adopt a broader global health agenda - one that would incorporate the health threats posed by climate change as well as the structural violence of unjust economic policies and systems. Since then, Medact has been working to mobilise, support and organise health professionals to be more effective social agents for social change. A relaunch conference in 2013 marked a further milestone in revitalising Medact and confirming its future course."
3. Briefing: Concerns Regarding Palantir Technologies and NHS Data Systems
https://www.medact.org/2026/resources/reports/briefing-palantir-fdp/
4. The Technological Republic, in brief. Official PDF Summary: A direct 22-point summary of the book's key arguments was released by Palantir.
https://youmark-images.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Palantir-Manifesto.pdf
5. The government now has a chain of contracts with Palantir stretching from the pandemic to the present: £60m for the COVID Data Store, £25m to make Palantir the incumbent supplier, and a £330m-£480m deal to run the new NHS data spine. Add in defence, intelligence and border-security contracts, and the picture is clear: Palantir is being embedded across the British state. This is not procurement - it is the concentration of unaccountable power in private hands.

For more than two decades, successive governments - Labour, Coalition, Conservative and now Labour again - have pursued the same structural goal with patient data for the NHS. They have refused to support and invest in the public data services at Hospital Trusts and GPs that have struggled against all the odds to maintain patient data for hospital and community services whilst instead these governments have spent billions of pounds to outsource this core infrastructure to private consortia many of whom have failed to deliver any data services at all.

In 2002, the then Labour government handed over the NHS IT system National Programme for Information Technology (NPfIT) to the private sector companies like BT, CSC/DXC, Fujitsu, Accenture, Atos, Cerner, iSoft and TPP. The contract went from £6.2 billion previously agreed to more than £10 billion over 10 years. In 2006, during this period, many of the private consortia demanded massive payments for alleged breach of contract by NHS Trusts. These Trusts had been put in the impossible situation of not wanting to hand over to the private IT companies their hard-pressed IT workers. These highly skilled workers were working on present working IT systems for their patients. To transfer these staff to systems that were not working would destroy their own services. The so-called aim of NPfIT was to be a single national electronic patient record, a central "spine", with standardised systems across all NHS Trusts. What happened instead was a slow-motion collapse that took nearly a decade. It cost the public treasury more than £10 billion without delivering a byte of central "spine" data.

In 2010, Atos was made the prime contractor responsible for delivering the General Practice Extraction Service (GPES) system under NHS Digital's predecessor Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC). GPES was the NHS system designed to extract coded data from GP practices for payments, planning, surveillance and analysis. Atos was responsible for the core extraction software, the interface with GP clinical IT systems and the delivery of the extraction engine. In 2015, the National Audit Office (NAO) condemned the contract as being over three years late, as being over-budget with a cost of over £40 million, and as "not fit for purpose"; only one extraction worked and then the system was abandoned as one of the largest failures in IT history.

The names have changed - BT, CSC, Fujitsu, Atos, and now Palantir. The branding of the data has changed - NPfIT, care.data, Covid Data Store, and now the Federated Data Platform (FDP). Palantir's involvement with NHS data originated in March 2020 via an initial emergency contract to build a COVID-19 data store. While this trial was valued at £1, follow-on contracts in late 2020 and later extensions raised the company's Covid-related payments to top £60 million. The massive seven-year contract to build the FDP was awarded to a consortium in 2023 led by Palantir Technologies FDP without open competition. Next Palantir was awarded a "transition" contract in 2023 of £25 million and then a full contract signed by the previous government estimated to be from £330-£480 million.

The result is a 24-year cycle of billion-pound contracts (see data table above), and complete technical failures of these companies to provide this service, yet still walking away with these billions of pounds of NHS funding. The response has been the huge opposition to the outsourcing of patient data to these private data consortiums. Movements of the people have grown, refusing to let their health records be handed over by GPs and hospitals worried that the data would reach private insurance companies and government agencies such as the Department of Social Security, and so on. This has culminated in the mass opposition to the current FDP which is being rolled out today by the government.

Makeshift concentration camp on board Israeli warship

An Italian-flagged vessel, the Eros 1, which sailed as part of the Global Sumud Flotilla in spring 2026, was intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters near Crete at the end of April. The seizure and arrests provoked international outcry, with harrowing first-hand accounts from detainees exposing the criminality of Israeli authorities in attacking these civilian humanitarian missions at sea.

Sumud is the Arabic word for steadfastness or resilience. Since 2007, and most notably after the 2010 Mavi Marmara raid, international flotillas have repeatedly attempted to deliver food, water, medicine and other lifesaving supplies while publicly contesting both the legality and the morality of the blockade. What began as sporadic attempts has matured into the Global Sumud Flotilla: a multinational movement composed of dozens of vessels, scores of national delegations, organised port-worker solidarity (especially in Genoa), and hundreds of activists and medical teams united to break the siege and deliver humanitarian relief.

Eros 1 departed Barcelona on April 12, 2026, as part of a coordinated spring effort to reach Gaza. On the day of interception, the wider flotilla comprised roughly 58 boats and some 175 activists representing about 70 countries. Overnight on April 29-30, Israeli forces boarded and intercepted Eros 1 in international waters off Crete; while several vessels were redirected or released, Eros 1 and various members of its crew were taken. Israeli authorities defended their action as consistent with enforcement of a lawful blockade and falsely accused some participants of illicit conduct; organisers and participants countered that the mission was strictly humanitarian and peaceful.

Among those arrested aboard Eros 1 were two prominent activists, Thiago Ávila and Saif Abukeshek, who were held in Israel for more than a week before being deported; other named passengers included Osman Zolkifli and Dr. Jihan Alya Mohd Nordin. Human rights groups, including Amnesty International, expressed grave concern about the detentions and the treatment of those taken into custody, while Israel's counter-terrorism bureau publicly asserted alleged ties between elements of the flotilla and Hamas.

The interceptions prompted sharp international condemnations: the UN Human Rights office demanded the immediate release of Saif Abukeshek and Thiago Ávila and called for investigation into "disturbing accounts of severe mistreatment", while Amnesty International described the action as an "arbitrary detention of dozens of activists" that underscores "the dangerous consequences of decades of impunity". These statements crystallised widespread diplomatic pressure and calls for accountability.

A detainee from Eros 1 later posted a detailed eyewitness account on social media describing traumatic treatment during and after the interception. According to the witness, detainees were held in cramped, squalid conditions aboard an Israeli warship in what the account called "a makeshift concentration camp", with hundreds confined in shipping containers (the post cited 181 people crammed into three containers). The account alleges confiscation of personal belongings, including jewellery that was never returned; widespread physical and psychological abuses such as use of flashbangs, rubber bullets, forced stress positions and severe sleep deprivation; repeated soaking from water-cannon use that left people constantly wet; and grossly inadequate food and water. After release, the witness reported that 36 people required hospitalisation and that two detainees remained imprisoned in Israel facing terrorism charges. The post framed the experience as deeply traumatic and urged readers to press their governments to act [1].

The Eros 1 incident highlights the recurring pattern surrounding the Gaza flotillas: determined civilian humanitarian action repeatedly meeting militarised interdiction. The centrality of a European-flagged vessel and the presence of activists from countries such as Brazil and Spain have intensified diplomatic scrutiny and sharpened international questions about the legal reach of the blockade and the standards governing treatment of civilians intercepted at sea.

Israel is increasingly turning to military means and police powers precisely because the attempts to defame the flotilla and its participants have utterly failed. The flotillas are important acts of collective defiance by the peoples of the world in the face of inaction or complicity by many governments and the paralysis of the UN in holding Israel to account. All eyes on the flotillas!

(Sources: Amnesty, GSF, OHCHR/UN, social media, news agencies)

Notes
1. Jay Bignose Green Facebook page, May 7, 2026
https://www.facebook.com/100003563739291/posts/26549125888122842

Workers' Weekly condemns the new sanctions against Cuba ordered by US President Trump on May 1. The White House issued the new sanctions by Executive Order, using emergency powers of the President. The order imposes new sanctions on entities, persons or affiliates that support Cuba, declaring that "the President is addressing the national security threats posed by communist Cuba". The irrational justification includes that Cuba "aligns itself with countries and malicious actors hostile to the United States". It repeats numerous US imperialist lies that Cuba facilitates military and intelligence operations of "hostile" countries; and that "Cuba maintains close ties to other major state sponsors of terrorism, including the Government of Iran, and provides safe haven for transnational terrorist groups, including Hezbollah". It claims that "Cuba provides a permissive environment for hostile foreign intelligence, military, and terrorist operations less than 100 miles from the American homeland." This last point alludes to US claims about China using Cuban territory to spy on the US, a claim that is unsubstantiated and denied by both Cuba and China.

The US has fabricated justifications which it claims warrant the sanctions and aggression against Cuba. Nevertheless, despite the fabrications and the attempts of President Donald Trump to divert from the US failure to take over Iran and prevail in the Strait of Hormuz, the US threat of military action against Cuba must be taken seriously, and the working class and people step up their resolve to stand with Cuba.

We reprint herewith the statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Cuba, May 7, 2026.

Trump's May 1 Executive Order Increases Harm to Cuban Population and Reinforces Threat of Aggression

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejects, in the strongest terms, the Executive Order issued by the White House on May 1, 2026, which intensifies, to extreme and unprecedented levels, the economic, financial and commercial blockade against Cuba.

Likewise, it condemns the decision of the United States Treasury Department of May 7, 2026, which added the Cuban entities Gaesa and MoaNickel SA to the List of Specially Designated Nationals, this being the first coercive measure derived from the order signed on May 1.

This is a ruthless act of economic aggression that amplifies the extraterritorial effects of the blockade, with the potential application of secondary sanctions against foreign companies, banks, and entities, even if their business in the United States has no connection to Cuba. This measure will further hinder the functioning of the national economy, which has already been facing the devastating effects of the oil blockade imposed on January 29, 2026, paralysing fuel exports to the country.

Acting as the world's policeman and in blatant violation of international law and the fundamental principles of free trade in goods and services, the sovereign right of all states that have or wish to maintain economic, commercial, and financial relations with Cuba is being explicitly, blatantly, and directly attacked. The highest US authorities, particularly the Secretary of State, are attempting to force the international community, through blackmail and intimidation, to submit to and comply with the blockade.

No country is exempt from this threat of extending genocide against the Cuban people, attempting to force Cuba's isolation from the international economic and financial scene.

We warn that this aggression against the Cuban economy and people will only achieve its intended destructive effect if sovereign and independent nations allow themselves to be intimidated and coerced by the United States government. We know that the world will never meekly accept illegal regulations, will not relinquish sovereign equality, nor will it leave its citizens, businesses, corporations, and financial institutions unprotected. The international community has historically opposed and condemned the genocide being perpetrated against the Cuban people by the United States government, a genocide that has lasted for almost seven decades.

We denounce the criminal nature of these aggressive measures aimed at starving and desperationing the entire Cuban population and attempting to generate a social, economic, and political catastrophe on a national scale. We also reject the intention of the United States government to create a humanitarian crisis to justify more dangerous actions, including military aggression against Cuba.

In all international forums, Cuba will continue to denounce the blockade. Likewise, we urge the international community to confront this onslaught, which constitutes a dangerous escalation in the United States' desire to exercise domination and control over Cuba's destiny, violating the independence and sovereignty of all states.

Havana, May 7, 2026