The LibDems can't erase the last five years in 100 days.

Does changing the Party Leader for  someone who may have rebelled against the former leadership in the past wipe out the Long Shadow of the past number of years.

With Jeremy Corbyn favourite to win  the Labour leadership contest and Tim Farron  now the leader of the LibDems both parties may hope the electorate who have deserted them because they seem to differ only slightly for the Tories will return.

However neither can surely  wipe away years of Blairiism or being the Tories bag carriers in a instant.


Our old friend  LibDem AM  Peter Black seems to thing so if his Blog is anything to go by.

Peter refers to an article in the Huffington Post in which  Tim Farron argues that

"After Just 100 Days, The Penny Is Well and Truly Dropping on How Hard Lib Dems Fought in Government".

And it reads like good old fashioned radical Liberalism as Peter Black points out

Tim Farron writes that week after week, we have seen the Tories roll back a whole raft of policies that the Liberal Democrats blocked in government:


Farron writes

• Protection of housing benefit for those under 21 - gone;
• Protection of child tax credits for larger families - gone;
• Protection for the benefit rates for people with disabilities and health problems that make it particularly difficult for them to enter the job market - gone.
• And, tragically, we know the Tories' ideological, unnecessary welfare cuts will hit the poorest families in the country - mostly hardworking families.

He continues:

On the environment, David Cameron is now free to be every bit as good as his word, and, with a massive downgrade of the agenda that the Lib Dems championed in coalition, he absolutely has. So, we have already seen ten key environmental policies, developed by consensus over many years, watered down or completely scrapped.

• Support for onshore windfarms - gone;
• The green deal aimed at improving energy efficiency in people's homes - gone;
• Protection for fracking in precious wildlife areas - gone;
• And the decade long plan to make all new homes "zero carbon" by 2016 - suddenly, inexplicably, gone.

 And to be fair to Tim Farron he was one of only two LibDems who voted against the Bedroom Tax.


And then Peter spoils it all with a load of bollocks

He writes

 The Liberal Democrats leader concludes that the Liberal Democrats have been the only ones to front up and oppose brutal welfare cuts on the weakest in society. We are the only party showing compassion to desperate asylum seekers from war-torn countries and calling for an EU wide solution to a true humanitarian crisis.
On this he is right. What we need to do now though is to take that message to the country, community by community through the sorts of grassroots campaigning that the party once specialised in. With Labour in disarray, with the nationalist parties of Plaid Cymru and UKIP having nothing new to say on these issues, this is our opportunity. We must not fluff it.

He seems to ignore the fact  Plaid the SNP and Greens have opposed all the above concerns that he and his leader now share and which the LibDems mutely stood aside from for in order to get their bums on seats arund the Tory lead cabinet.

It is welcome to see the LibDem joining in the Anti-Austerity campaign and speak out on Humanity  but they are not the only voice nor are they the loudest voice they lost those  May 2010 when they  backed Cameron for PM and in May 2015 they became minor players .

Peter Black ,Tim Farron and the rest of the LibDems  can't claim this role for themselves or even to lead it anymore.