Disclosure: I don’t like Charles Clarke. I met him only once, in 2003. I was investigating political party financing for the ippr whilst he was chairman of the Labour Party. We had a series of meetings arranged, all of which were cancelled, some whilst I was on my way to the meeting. When we finally met, at a small cross-party seminar I organised, he arrived (late) only to launch straight into an attack on us. It was unpleasant and in stark contrast to the way I was treated by every other senior politician I met. But, as ever in politics, I like and admire some people who like Charles Clarke. So he might not be all bad.

Charles Clarke has been branded by some as a traitor to the Labour Party. His frequent attacks on Gordon Brown have irritated party members in Norwich and fellow MPs. I actually think Charles Clarke has good reason to attack Gordon Brown, given the way that Brown appears to have dealt with him whilst he was secretary of state for education. But, as I’ve said elsewhere, now is not the time for these debates.

So I was entertained to spot the following report in the archives of the Guardian from 1 December 1995:

Kinnock aide (Charles Clarke) says (John) Smith ‘disloyal’

by Patrick Wintour

Neil Kinnock’s most senior adviser during his time as Labour leader has . . . conceded that the late John Smith was disloyal to Mr Kinnock before the 1992 general election.

Mr Clarke says of John Smith:

“Some people alleged that John Smith had a game plan to replace Neil as leader of the party. That was put to me by a lot of people. I in fact discussed it with John at one point. I believed that was entirely untrue.

“However, I have to say that after the 1992 election, one or two people in very senior positions indicated that John had been talking in a disloyal way.”

In other news that day, England were playing South Africa and were struggling after an opener scored 100.

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However, long before this battle was concluded, the banks had lost the war. Even before the credit crunch banks had become significantly unpopular due to the ‘unfairness’ of charging customers for getting into financial difficulty. Banks were thought by many to be acting in an under-hand, dishonest fashion. Some high street banks began the dispute by allowing the legal cases to run their course in lower courts, and then failing to challenge them – resulting in (relatively) small payments to bolshie customers. Some banks (eg. Nat West) then changed tack and threatended to close the accounts of those who complained.

In my view, the banks’ position was undermined not by their tactics in the dispute but by the fundamental lack of honesty in the relationship with customers. Let’s be clear: free banking is a chimera. For too long high street banks have been providing a service (which in many cases has been excellent, improving and innovative) to customers without a charge and pretending that there are no costs involved. All the while they cut costs, outsourced administrative functions, closed branches, without ever seriously examining whether a different relationship could be struck up with customers. And as newspapers are finding out, if you tell people something costs nothing for long enough, you lose a sense of value in your business.

The distance that this helped create between bank and customer is further exacerbated by the lack of serious competition on the high street – even before the credit crunch brought a new round of consolidation – meaning that customers do not feel as though there is much choice as to who you bank with. When I was making the decision, as a young teenager, it was between Nat West’s free CD walkman and Lloyds TSB’s free camera (35 mm, not digital) – hardly a decision which promotes responsible financial management. And the sense that the banks had all the power, and none of the accountability to customers, eventually ended up with the foolish speculation which brought about the credit crunch.

The banks may have won this particular battle but they have lost the respect of customers and will struggle to win it back. It’s a market ripe for a new entrant to break the mould.

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1. Dear Brian Hartzer, Nat West CEO
2. What happened to the credit crunch?

I lost my wedding ring. It felt awful. For days afterwards I’d go to touch my ring only briefly to re-experience the sensation of losing it. The only saving grace was that I lost it on my way home from a drunken night out – with my wife. imagine what she would have said if I was out with the lads.

I decided to claim on my insurance policy because I really wanted a replacement, it’s a piece of symbolism to which I’m attached, because I really wanted the same, distinctive ring and because I couldn’t afford to replace it. Thankfully, I had been paying a little extra to cover loss of our wedding rings – and extra still for accidental loss of valuable items. Or so I thought.

I phoned Halifax – or whatever it’s called now – to report it. The assistant was perfectly helpful, even if the website did advertise a disconnected phone number and even though I had to key-in my policy number and give the same details again to the person who took the call.

The next stage of the process was dealing the the loss adjusters – creatively called the Loss Management Group. They were particularly efficient and it was good to be able to email them my documents. Two days later they called me with their decision: the ring had increased in value by 10% in the two and a half years since I got married.

And then for the bad news which felt so unfair that I can only conclude that you don’t get a fair deal from the Halifax:

1. I can only buy a replacement ring from their jewellers of preference: H Samuel or Ernest Jones. Except I bought my ring in Hatton Garden and neither of their jewellers sell my ring. The closest designs they offer are rings that two people I know have.

And of course neither jeweller sell a platinum male wedding ring for £1000 so I will have to pay more.

This is wrong on a matter of principle. I didn’t buy my insurance with H Samuel. I shouldn’t be forced to buy their products in return.

2. I have to pay the excess in cash, up front, before they will give me the gift voucher. Great for their cashflow, not for mine.

3. They will give me a cash settlement so I can buy the ring I want – rather than the ring they want me to have. But I would need to accept a 40% reduction – 60% including the excess – which would leave me in no position to buy a replacement.

And at the end of all of this, with someone else’s choice of wedding ring and paying an extra £250 for the privilege, the cost of my insurance will increase by 30% to reflect the loss of my no claims bonus.

I always found it hard to trust insurance companies – if you gained more than you paid they would go bust. But they can’t all be as bad as the Halifax policy.

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The match

This was a good test for the young Liverpool team against a number of experienced Sunderland players including Nosworthy and Marton Fulop. The referee ensured it would be a scrappy game thanks to some officious – although not unfair – penalising of some lively defensuve play. Sunderland never really threatened the Liverpool goal, except for a couple of chances around the hour mark. However, Liverpool struggled to create clear chances. Eccleston ran at defenders, who more often than not brought them down. This led to the freekick on the stroke of half time which yielded the first goal. Dani Pacheco had a previous effort straight down the keeper’s throat but that was slightly further out and closer to the touchline. This was perfect, about 20-25 yards out, to the left of the penalty area. The keeper got there but the effort was too good.

The second half was more open as Sunderland looked for the equaliser and Liverpool looked compact in defence and quick on the break. The second goal came in the last 10 minutes as Pacheco floated a fantastic freekick into the box from the right hand side and Robbie Threlfall connected well with the header. The ball was that good that if had missed, Ayala would have scored instead.

I really enjoy watching the reserves because game on game, they appear to improve on their weaknesses and the strengths get better. I was really impressed by the workrate of the team, closing down Sunderland from front to back – and from a team missing experienced players like Spearing, Plessis and Kelly.

Outstanding performances

Today was all about Dani Pacheco. He is playing slightly deeper than before, more in midfield than off the front man and he influences the game much more. He gave the ball away occassionally with some of his more ambitious passes but his vision is incredible, picking out passes that others don’t see, spreading the play and having great close control. His ‘Hollywood balls’ may not be Gerrard-esque but his incisive, attacking passing is the reserve team equivalent of Alonso.

The defensive aspects of his game are improving and he was always harrying the Sunderland players – and got unfairly booked for 3 ’something of nothing’ challenges.

Nathan Eccelton was very exciting, never failing to run at defenders. However, he wasn’t quite so good at bringing other players into the game. He had a great chance near the end when he just tried to beat too many players rather than having the shot or bringing in a team mate.

David Amoo came into the game more in the second half and caused problems for defenders.

Ayala is slightly too keen to get stuck in – and probably conceeded more freekicks than you’d like for a centre half.

It was great to see Irwin in his better position of centre midfield though, for me, he lacked a bit of defensive discipline as he chased after the ball. He doesn’t yet have the presence at this level that, say, Palsson or Spearing bring to the team.

Threlfall looked really solid and sometimes offered good support going forward. It was a brave decision to turn down another loan move, but the gamble paid off tonight.

The negatives

Nikola Saric didn’t really make an impact and it’s painful watching someone with as little confidence as Brouwer in front of goal. As a team, there were passages where they looked tired – and lost a bit of concentration. And it would be good to see someone who was able to dictate play more, and Liverpool keep the ball better. But from what I’ve seen thus far, they’ll be working on this.

Alberto Aquilani

It was great to see him and he looked delighted to be playing – I even saw Doc Mark Waller smile at the end of the game! It must have been nice for him to come into a confident team, playing well near the top of the table. Much easier than being the great white hope for a struggling team without confidence. Oh.

He played a couple of nice passes – and sat just off the front men. But we didn’t see enough to come to any conclusions. My guess is that he will be on the bench against Arsenal for the Carling Cup and will not play a full part until the middle of November.

For the first time this season I didn’t see Rafa at a home reserve team game, which was odd. Perhaps he didn’t want to put pressure on Aquilani. Or perhaps he didn’t want to be too close to Gillett.

Next game: Everton v Liverpool reserves, 3 November

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If anyone can turn online audiences into members it ought to be The Guardian – if only because they’ve got so many of them. But if Mr Lanyado is right, the case for organisations to invest resources in social media is weaker than many hope. More than one million people follow the Guardian across its Twitter accounts and guardian.co.uk has over 2 million absolute unique visitors a month. As Alan Rudbridger suggested in his speech to the Media Standards Trust if only the Guardian could get a few pennies from each of its online users, the crisis in newspapers would be calmed.

However, building a successful membership organisation depends on more than finding attractive services to sell to a large audience – and The Guardian has thus far failed to do even that. But an events-based membership would be an obvious proposition for membership.The paper does have some useful lessons to draw on. The Guardian already organises a series of revenue-raising conferences on specialist issues, including the Oxford Media Convention and Activate. The New York Times experimented with charging audiences a premium to spend time with businessmen, celebrities and the like although the a move attracted criticism from FT editor, Lionel Barber for its possible conflicts of interest.

There would be limited appeal to a membership offer based around events. In London there are plenty of free or low cost places to hear internationally renowned speakers so The Guardian would be a start-up next to the likes of the RSA, Fabian Society or even Compass. And of course it’s a detterent to non London-based members and goes against The Guardian’s Mancunian roots. It’s much harder to organise events outside London.

So it’s important that the ‘membership offer’ is attractive. But as Jeff Jarvis says:

“don’t think if it as merely a revenue opportunity . . . It’s only a new price tag for a new product: a mug instead of news.”

Membership of The Guardian could be based on a much broader, political appeal around identity. Mr Lanyado is right to point out the declining class identification has limited the extent to which people buy a newspaper because it’s targetted at ‘their sort’. But there is a clear view of an archetypal Guardian reader and insult or not, it broadly holds true – at least in Stoke Newington where I live. But as the Guardian discovered with the launch of Comment is Free, the people who engage with the Guardian do not necessarily share its values. Moreover, membership of the newspaper would be unlikely to have a wider social relevance. Those who read the paper as part of their identity will already operate in networks of other Guardian readers.

The most radical option would be for the newspaper to constitute its membership as an ownership Trust – along the lines that Jeff Jarvis describes as ‘membership with meaning‘. As Jarvis says:

“you have to invite them to have a real and meaningful role in what you do, even a sense – if not a stake – of ownership and, consequently, control.

The Guardian is already owned by a charitable Trust so an ‘FC Barcelona for the Guardian’ is not quite the radical step-change it appears.

One of the significant attractions with Comment is Free was the ability of ordinary people to contribute to The Guardian online. A memebership model which gave real influence on the content of the newspaper would almost certainly be attractive. And by limiting it to paying members, the paper would avoid the LA Times ‘wikitorial’ fiasco. However, that would again represent both a challenge to the Guardian’s ethics and a tension with the purchasers of the newspaper.

However, this vision reveals a central tension at the heart of some social media strategies. The Guardian’s Jemima Kiss uses Twitter, in part, because of the expertise of her followers. They are self-selecting and there is no barrier to entry. If these followers become more scarce (because the Guardian charges) then the wisdom of the crowd is diminished because it is smaller. So no longer can the Guardian practice its innovative journalism by crowd-sourcing data or user generated content because it will have to be the preserve of the membership.

Developing a successful membership is neither the logical next step when your social media following reaches a particular mass. And not all organisations can hand over control to members without compromising the service they provide – and the values which underpin this – to its wider stakeholders. This doesn’t make the Guardian’s proposals inherently bad. But if they are to succeed, it will be because they’ve been able to reconcile:

• An attractive offer to members which means more than a financial transaction
• Meaningful involvement in the output of the newspaper without compromising its reputation amongst those who sustain it without becoming members
• The need to provide and enable networks amongst members which are possible only through the Guardian but where that exclusivity doesn’t damage the end product

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