Diolch, Lywydd. Jo Cox, or Jo Leadbeater, or little Jo, as many in Wales will have remembered her, led a full and brilliant life. She was known to many of us in Welsh Labour when she worked for Glenys Kinnock, and developed her passion for international development and social justice there. There is little doubt that the attack on Jo Cox was political in nature. It was an unforgivable and brutal attack, not just on a female politician, going about her work, but against everything she stood for. But it’s not the politics we should reflect on today, it’s the person.

She had very many friends in Wales, and everyone knew her political career was going to be something special, not because of her ambition, but because of her fierce determination, her decency, and her absolute fundamental desire to get things done. That meant offering the hand of friendship across the political divide. Tomorrow would have been Jo’s forty-second birthday, and there’ll be events across the world, where people will repeat that phrase that has already become a mantra,

‘we are far more united and have far more in common…than the things that divide us.’

Llywydd, Jo’s life was cut short, but it was a life lived in full, and a life that had given us inspiration. And it is that inspiration we must focus on today and in the future, and not just the devastating events that took place last Thursday.