At least some of the Chancellor’s promises are actually working

The phrase ‘sharing economy’ was coined a decade or so ago to describe collaborative new business models made possible by the internet, from Airbnb and Uber to crowdfunding, peer-to-peer lending and skill bartering sites. It was about ways of monetising assets, circulating capital and earning casual livings that boosted economic activity after the ‘great recession’ and it will be a hive of creativity in the next recovery — even though its partner is the ‘gig economy’ whose insecurity has left so many people in hardship now.

But I want to propose a more urgent purpose for the same phrase: to describe how every business should share the impact of the current cataclysm, make it more bearable, spread it over time and limit the need for state bailouts. Last week I wrote about corporate social responsibility towards individual customers. This week I’m talking about business-to-business: commercial landlords allowing rent holidays, utilities allowing late payment, banks (of which more in a moment) flexing overdraft limits and waiving penalties; larger businesses paying small suppliers as promptly as they can; super-markets not screwing farmers; everyone making allowance for their counterparts’ cashflows in anticipation of the day when trade returns to normal.

The first sharing economy was really all about money-making, particularly for its most successful founders, but with a communitarian gloss. The new sharing economy will not be about altruism at all but about pain-spreading as a matter of mutual self-interest: not herd immunity, if you like, but herd survival.

Banks take a kicking

Ah yes, the banks. They weren’t in the front line when the crisis began, but it wasn’t going to be long before they came in for a kicking. Sure enough, they’ve just had one for throwing bureaucratic hurdles and demands for personal guarantees in the way of the government’s business interruption loan scheme and for resisting a Bank of England directive to cancel £7.5