David McCrone

“Thus cooperation and trust make contracts work, not the other way round. Outsourcing contracts rest on the fundamental failure to draw the distinction between statistically calculable risk and fundamental uncertainty. Handling the latter is manifestly the role of the state. There is a 'fantasy of controllability' over future costs which appears to shield the state from risk, while leaving it vulnerable to future uncertainty (like Carillion). This leads to blame shifting when things go wrong. The then-Prime Minister Theresa May's argument (16 January 2018) that 'the government is just another customer of Carillion', like many others, fails to acknowledge the prime role of the state as the political vehicle for handling uncertainty.”
― David McCrone, Who Runs Edinburgh?