It's interesting that Burnham's No10 North operations will be co-located with GCHQ’s North West operations at Heron House (Albert Square, Manchester city centre), which opened in 2019. Activities there include "intelligence, cyber, and science teams".

No10 North will form a key part of the Manchester Digital Campus that's been in planning for decades. Most of the "civil servants" who will be based at the campus will be in digital roles, notably developing AI "solutions".

The Government Digital Service (primarily focused on Digital ID systems development) will play a key part in the campus. It also facilitates the procurement of surveillance systems from companies like Palantir across UK government. (The Cabinet Secretary, Antonia Romeo, also helped fast-track Palantir's embedding in the NHS).

Many have noted that the establishment of No10 North happened very quickly after Burnham's appointment. But Manchester's role at the centre of centralised government snooping and surveillance is what it represents - as well as the repatriation of UK citizen data to CIA spin-out firms like Palantir.

Jeffrey Peel

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