Is Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s special adviser, someone you want to do business with? Engaging with someone who is exercising the prerogative of the harlot — wielding power without responsibility — is a tricky one for companies whose business models are dependent on a government not acting like it is run by misfits or weirdos.
Such companies — collectively known as government contractors or outsourcers, private companies delivering public services — generally have had a rotten decade. They have been assaulted by a double-headed club since the Treasury went down a road of austerity to repair the economy after the global financial crisis little more than ten years ago.
The government since then has done one of two things: it turned off the spending
