Palantir stake explodes from £276,000 to £3.65m as Camden faces Gaza backlash

Camden Council’s investments in Palantir, the controversial AI company with ties to the Israeli military, have increased by over 1,200% since October 2023.

The council’s overall holdings in companies complicit in Israel’s violation of Palestinian rights have risen in value by almost 30 percent – worth £28 million – since June 2024

The surge in value is exposed in new Freedom of Information disclosures provided to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and shared exclusively with Declassified.

The more than 60 companies in question have been identified by PSC as those which are providing products, equipment and services used by Israel in breaches of international law and human rights.

The dramatic rise comes as Camden Council leader Sagal Abdi-Wali is standing as the Labour Party’s candidate in the heated Holborn and St Pancras by-election.

It is Keir Starmer’s former constituency and includes significant portions of Camden, where  the council has largely ignored widespread public protests and demands for divestment since 2024.

The value of the council’s holdings in Palantir grew from £276,444 to £3.65m in the period between October 2023 and December 2025.

Additional FOI disclosures from late 2024 show that the biggest increase in Camden’s investments in Palantir occurred between September 2024 and December 2025. The value of Camden’s shareholding increased from £683,045.88 to £3.65m in this period.

Palantir entered into a highly controversial strategic partnership with the Israeli Ministry of Defence in January 2024.

There have also been widespread calls for the UK government to cancel numerous contracts Palantir holds with the NHS and other government departments.

This May, London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan blocked the Metropolitan Police awarding a £50m contract to the company founded by billionaire Peter Thiel who has said that freedom and democracy are “no longer compatible”.

Camden’s holdings also include over £10m invested in defence companies providing weapons and supplies to the Israel Defense Forces. This includes shares in Boeing (£1.69m), Lockheed Martin (£1.12m) and Israeli drone manufacturer Elbit Systems (£46,837).

Camden, the large central London borough, has over £2.4bn under investment through its Local Government Pension Fund (LGPF). The fund invests money for Camden Council employees, usually by subscribing to funds run by asset managers such as Baillie Gifford and Legal & General. 

The PSC has campaigned since 2025 to force the government to ensure that similar local government schemes use screening tools to prevent investments in companies complicit with Israel’s occupation and genocide.

As part of the campaign, PSC has used Freedom of Information requests to establish the content and value of shareholdings held by LGPFs. PSC used the first disclosure from Camden, dated June 2024, to determine that Camden held £104m in companies complicit with Israeli occupation and genocide.

The latest disclosure which covers the value of the shareholdings up to the end of 2025, shows that they have increased to £133.5 million.

An analysis of the disclosures indicates that the increase in value is due to both the increased value of the shares held by Camden and the purchase of additional shareholdings in complicit companies.

Lewis Backon, PSC campaigns officer, said: “It is beyond shameful that, in the face of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and atrocities across Palestine, Camden council is continuing to funnel many millions of pounds of workers’ deferred wages into companies making these crimes possible.”

Ignoring calls for divestment

The growth in the value of Camden’s shareholding has happened despite widespread public calls for divestment.

The calls began in late 2024, when Lorna Russell – who was then the sole Green Party councillor on Camden council – attempted to move a motion calling for the pension fund to divest from complicit companies.

Russell was unable to find any other councillors to second the motion, which meant it was not heard in the council chamber. The council is controlled by the Labour Party, which has long had an outright majority of councillors in the borough.

Camden’s rules, however, allowed that the motion would have to be debated if a petition containing 4,000 signatures was presented.

In January 2025, campaigners from Camden Friends of Palestine delivered a petition with over 4,000 signatures, urging the council to conduct an audit of the fund with a view to divestment.

The debate took place in January 2025 as hundreds of protestors lined the street outside the council chambers while campaigners held signs and called from the public gallery.

Lorna Russell was the only councillor to argue for divestment, although the Labour Councillor Awale Olad called out the humanitarian crisis in Gaza in a later session.

Months later, Olad, a councillor of fifteen years, decided not to stand for re-election as a Labour councillor.

He told the Labour Party of his decision in a stinging letter released to the local press. “I alone stood up and spoke out against the horrifying situation [in Gaza]”, Olad explained.

Russell told Declassified that the figures reported here “raise serious questions” about whether the responsible investment policy Camden claims to have is actually working.

“In a two-year period when divestment has been a key political issue, it is astounding that the value of Camden’s investment in Palantir has increased more than tenfold,” she said.

“Camden’s approach to engagement is evidently not working and our money is increasingly being invested in companies whose activities conflict with our values.”

She added: “Divestment is the only way to ensure that our pension fund does not profit from practices we would condemn publicly, and must be implemented as soon as possible.”

Labour candidate’s silence

Camden council leader and by-election candidate Sagal Abdi-Wali is running against Green Party leader Zack Polanski.

Abdi-Wali, who was raised in Camden by Somali refugee parents, has said that Starmer was “really inspirational”.

In a recent interview in the New Statesman, Abdi-Wali said that “people really value” the work Starmer had done as an MP and that he had “given his life to social justice.”

Abdi-Wali was first elected as a councillor in 2022 in the safe Labour ward of Camden Square.

She was selected by the Labour Party to stand in the ward after the previous councillor, Ranjit Singh, was effectively blocked and dissuaded from standing.

He was one of seven councillors blocked by the Starmerite local machinery in moves that were widely described as a ‘purge’ of left-wing and independent-minded councillors.

Abdi-Wali’s record on Gaza and divestment became a flashpoint in the council chamber a week ago.

Protestors in the gallery responded with upset when the council failed to debate a new motion on divestment.

A protestor from Camden Friends of Palestine read a statement from the gallery accusing Abdi-Wali of “refusing to speak about divestment even once during your time as councillor.” A video of the incident went viral on social media.

A review of Abdi-Wali’s social media and other public sources indicate that she does not appear to have written about or mentioned Gaza at any stage between 7 October 2023 and her selection as Labour’s MP candidate.

Abdi-Wali did not respond to Declassified’s requests to provide copies of statements or comments she has made on Gaza since her election as a councillor.

Abdi-Wali notably failed to sign up to PSC’s Candidate Pledge campaign, which was launched ahead of council elections held across the country in May 2026. The pledge committed council candidates to ensuring their local councils were not complicit in genocide and to undertake divestment.

Over 200 Labour council candidates signed the pledge, including 30 Labour candidates in the borough of Islington.

In neighbouring Camden, 43 candidates signed on, including a raft of Green and independent candidates. However, no Labour candidate from Camden joined them.

Abdi-Wali was made the leader of Camden Council in May 2026. She was proposed for the position by the Chief Whip of the Labour Group, Izzy Lenga.

Lenga, like Abdi-Wali, was selected for a safe Labour seat in 2022. In March 2021, Electronic Intifada revealed that Lenga had been photographed wearing an Israeli army uniform, draped in the Israeli flag and holding a rifle.

Camden council has long featured high-profile members of the pro-Israel Jewish Labour Movement (JLM). JLM, which was fiercely critical of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, is affiliated with the British subsidiary of the World Zionist Organisation (WZO).

In 2024, a BBC investigation established that the WZO’s ‘Settlement Division’ had provided money and support for the creation of Israeli settler outposts in the occupied West Bank.

In addition to Lenga, who is JLM’s vice president, prominent members of the group recently on the council have included the leader of the council between 2018 and 2024, Georgia Gould, and JLM’s National Secretary Rebecca Filer. Filer is one of six Labour councillors that sits on Camden’s pension committee. Gould is now a government minister.

Into the long grass

Following the public debate in January 2025, the Labour-dominated Camden Council ultimately decided to refer the matter to a specialist pension committee, which many critics believed was an attempt to kick it into the long grass.

The pension committee was dominated by Labour Party councillors, who made up six of its eight members. The other two members were drawn from the Liberal Democrats and the Tories.

In March 2025, two months after the fractious chamber debate on divestment, the Labour-dominated council amended its constitution to limit the scope of protests in the chamber, including passing a new rule to prevent people holding signs or banners in the public gallery.

The chamber had previously been temporarily closed after silent protestors had held up signs reading ‘end the genocide.’ The moves were attacked by the Greens and Lib Dems.

Minutes of the council’s specialist pension committee show that it finally produced the details of an audit of the LGPF in December 2025, nearly a year after it had been referred to the committee.

The council hired an outside firm to conduct the audit which determined that only £15.9m of Camden’s shareholdings, held across 46 companies, were exposed to significant human rights violation concerns related to conflict zones.

Responding to Declassified’s findings, a Camden Council spokesperson said: “We have always been open and transparent about how the pension fund is invested and we’re fully committed to our responsible investment principles.

“While there has not been a separate vote on the specific divestment proposal, the Pension Committee has carefully considered the issues raised and has taken a number of steps to strengthen the fund’s approach to responsible investment. We have a duty to act with the best long-term financial interests of members but, alongside this, we also expect environmental issues, social values, and human rights to play a central role in decision-making.

“Like all Local Government Pension Scheme funds, we operate within wider investment pooling arrangements, which means changes to portfolios can take time to implement. However, the Fund has made significant progress in recent years by strengthening its responsible investment approach, increasing sustainable investment, and reviewing exposure to investments that present environmental, social and governance risks.”