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George Osborne has said he thought no one would find out about a private viewing of the Bayeux tapestry he organised for the tech billionaire Peter Thiel at the British Museum.
The former chancellor, who is chair of the museum, told the Big Brue festival in Somerset that he had been on holiday when Thiel was shown the medieval artwork.
Thiel, who supports Donald Trump, is the founder of PayPal and Palantir, a software company that builds data integration, analytics and artificial intelligence platforms for government agencies and large corporations.
Palantir has a swathe of British public contracts, including, most controversially, a £330m deal with the NHS, which it has held since 2023.
The company also works for the US, Israeli and UK militaries. Its use of AI-powered software to support military strikes in Gaza and Iran, US Ice immigration raids and its access to NHS data has stoked concern.
Of the viewing, Osborne said: “It wasn’t like we expected anyone to know about it.” The museum’s director of development, Charlotte Appleyard, hosted Thiel at a VIP viewing of the tapestry before it opened to the public on 18 August.
The visit was revealed in the Guardian shortly after it happened.
When asked what the museum might have got in return, Osborne said: “The short answer is he hasn’t offered any money, and were he to offer money, the board would consider it and have to take into account the pros, you know, receiving more income, and the reputational risks.”
Osborne, who lives in Bruton, near where the festival is taking place, complained that people treat the British Museum like the Foreign Office when they protest about donors who are thought to support the Israeli government.
He said: “The critique was that [Thiel] was a supporter of the Israeli government … I mean, this is the most difficult, and almost all the protests that happen at the museum … When I started five years ago, they were climate protests, Just Stop Oil and that kind of thing. Now they’re almost universally Gaza.
“You know that is the moment I would say the most sensitive, difficult political issue for the museum, and you know we try and navigate it, and I keep trying to point out we’re not actually the Foreign Office.”
He said the museum has to take money from companies such as BP to be able to operate.
“You cannot say we want museums to be free, and then one of the biggest British companies offers us £50m, BP, and we go, oh, don’t, because we object to oil exploration. Where is the money going to come from?
“You’d shut down the British Museum. People do say this. They say you shouldn’t take tech money, you shouldn’t take oil money. You can’t take any money from the banks. We want the museum to be free. The museum would shut down.”
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