Good evening!

Carole here, excited to bring you a fresh instalment of our ongoing Palantir investigation. We’ve now published 12 articles on everyone’s favourite spytech firm, including one from back in January when we revealed that it now had £670m worth of contracts in the UK. That figure – and the foundational work that underpins it – has been cited across multiple news outlets and has played a fundamental role in understanding Peter Thiel’s firm and its relationship to the British state. And it’s a moment to reflect on the fact that it simply wouldn’t have been done if we didn’t have our readers’ support. 

Exactly a year ago, we launched the Nerve in an excited, exhausted heap up at the Labour party conference in Liverpool. And it feels pretty miraculous that not only are we still here, we’ve managed to hire journalists, break stories, hold 22 events around the country and do the kind of vital public interest journalism we believe Britain needs more of (here’s a piece all about our first year in this week’s Press Gazette), because our generous and endlessly wise paying members have joined the Nerve family to support our work: thank you to all of you! 

It’s been another busy week. I was back in Liverpool on Monday breaking the news that Lord Tom Watson of Palantir – the former deputy leader of the Labour party, who’s now taken up the role of “senior vice-president UK” at the firm – had sent one of its fiercest critics, MP Clive Lewis, a letter that enumerated all the times that Lewis had spoken about Palantir. The spytech firm had, in effect, been spying on him. If they had done that to an elected member of parliament, who else might they have surveilled? 

The truth is that Palantir’s bet on buying a Labour lord smells like desperation. Yesterday marked a day of protests, including outside its head office in London – we were there! – and around the country, and now the Financial Times is reporting that Andy Burnham is looking for a British alternative for Palantir's NHS and Ministry of Defence contracts. 

It couldn’t come at a more urgent moment. As the indefatigable Max Colbert reveals in our latest piece, the firm has now accrued a staggering £1bn of contracts with the UK state. The danger is that Palantir’s software – and therefore Peter Thiel’s political values and relationships – becomes so embedded that it’s impossible to extract. 

If our members weren’t funding this work, it simply wouldn’t have been done. So thank you. 

I’ll hand over to the others with the rest of this week’s stories, including a brilliant piece from Stewart Lee on the “Fairford Five” farce and an interview with the great Salman Rushdie.

Have a good weekend!

Carole

It’s obviously a significant story, and all that, but Stewart is finding it hard to take the goings-on in Gloucestershire seriously. The Fairford Five – “who sound like the heroes of an Enid Blyton novel about military sabotage, foreign influence and lashings of ginger beer” – have variously been described (mainly by Nigel Farage) as small boat arrivals (no), Middle Eastern nationals (they’re not) and highly dangerous (except they’ve been bailed). But he commends the actions of the farmer who saw white vans milling around in the middle of the night: “I would have assumed they were just delivery drivers who had given up and got lost, having hurled my order of the new Hawkwind Bristol Custom Bike Show 1986 live album into a damp bush”. Read his column here

Our investigative reporter Max Colbert has unearthed, via freedom of information requests and intense questioning of government departments, the full cost to the British taxpayer of the state’s dependency on controversial tech company Palantir – £992m. Labour MP Clive Lewis calls the spending an “addiction”. With pressure mounting from MPs and the public, but with his old pal Tom Watson now spinning for Palantir, will Andy Burnham have the mettle to do the right thing, and block future contracts with the Trump-adjacent data firm? Read our in-depth investigation here

Four years ago, the past that Salman Rushdie thought he had left behind rose up and almost killed him. Looking back on the frenzied knife attack against him – inspired by a three-decade-old fatwa, and now the subject of a major documentary – he and his wife, artist Rachel Eliza Griffiths, are surprised how well they came through it. Watching the film and revisiting that day has not been entirely easy, but, the novelist tells Dorian Lynskey, “it’s hard to get through an entire life without having a moment or two when life asks you quite hard questions”. Read the couple’s revealing interview here

Best known for starring in TV shows Ghosts and Stath Lets Flats, the actor and comedian Kiell Smith-Bynoe has a packed autumn schedule with two films out – Ghosts: The Possession of Button House and saucy comedic fable Wicker – plus he’s back on the road touring his hit improv comedy show Kool Story Bro. He took time out to chat with us about his current cultural favourites at the Nerve Live last Sunday – from the R&B artist he loves to a hilarious improvised couples therapy show – and why he thinks SNL: UK is “a big step forward for comedy”. Read Kiell’s hot tips here

A new James Graham play or TV show is always an event. Uniquely talented at turning social and political history into lively drama, his stage hits have included Punch (about a fatal blow and its consequences), Ink (focused on Rupert Murdoch’s Sun) and his 2012 breakthrough This House, about the 1970s Labour governments. Now he’s turned his focus to the colourful life and achievements of the pioneering British economist John Maynard Keynes, played by Rory Kinnear. But really, writes Nerve theatre critic Dorian Lynskey, it’s a beautiful and timely exploration of what it means to lead a good life. Read Dorian’s review here

Few people know more about Japanese food than Tim Anderson. He may have been born and raised in Wisconsin, but he’s studied the diet for two decades, lived for a time in Kitakyushu, written 10 cookbooks and won BBC’s Masterchef back in 2011 with a menu that included pork ramen and a Tokyo-inspired burger. This month, Tim’s new book, Japanese Curry, is published and here he shares the details for curry ramen. As he says, curry is one of that country’s “favourite comfort foods.” Get the recipe here