In a sticky patch fixed-income investors often reach for the safety of government bonds. A similar thing happens in equity markets: funds shift to companies that sell to governments. The share prices of Capita and Serco, two of the largest UK providers of humdrum services that everybody needs but no one particularly wants to do themselves, are respectively off by only about 5 per cent and up 7 per cent in the past six months. The FTSE All-Share is down 9 per cent.

Unglamorous stocks such as these seem to offer the elixir of defensive growth: long contracts with dependable cash flows, usually on steadily improving margins. The kicker, in many cases, is exposure to a private sector keen to offload more non-core but essential processes such as administrative support, human resources and finance.