The UK High Court ruled on Wednesday that the government acted unlawfully when it gave a contract to a company run by friends of Dominic Cummings, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser. The Good Law Project, a campaign group, had taken legal action against Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove over the decision to pay more than £500,000 ($700,000) of taxpayers’ money to market research firm Public First. The group claimed that Dominic Cummings, who was Boris Johnson’s right-hand man in Downing Street at the time, wanted focus group and communications support services work to be given to the company, whose bosses were his friends. In her ruling, Justice Finola O’Farrell said the decision showed “apparent bias” and was unlawful, because there had been a “failure to consider any other research agency.” She said that Cummings’s professional and personal connections with Public First did not preclude him from making an …