> Almost all governments have a legally defined public procurement framework.

These frameworks are all created and administered by same career bureaucrats.

  > If this is overridden, it's pretty much always by elected politicians, not by regular government employees.

Why they need to overridden in first place? Using of consultancy services is not usually banned.

Also it's not like 4 years ago either UK or EU governments would expect they will soon want to get rid of all US companies in their public sector.