Commenting after someone was found guilty of sending threatening messages about her, the MP for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford, Yvette Cooper, said: "There has been something very sad as well as very grim about dealing with this. Even just a few years ago I would never have imagined being involved in a court case where a local candidate or officer in another political party had made threats of violence. Politics needs to be better than this."

Yvette is right. Surely we’re better than this. Politics will always be about contentious issues, differences of opinion about important issues and things we hold dear. But surely we can find a way of disagreeing with each other in a civilised and respectful way, without resorting to threats and intimidation.

My former boss Paul Murphy certainly felt that way, regularly stressing the need to recognise that those who disagree with us are to be debated, not demonised. Paul’s ability to empathise – to make an effort to understand why someone else feels differently - certainly seems to be unfashionable these days.

Instead, too often we form ourselves into social media bubbles and throw insults at each other in an attempt to discredit. Yvette is right that we need to move on from this sort of thing, and I support her call for a new joint code of conduct against intimidation.

It was a pleasure to open the new Pontypool offices of Everett, Tomlin, Lloyd and Pratt recently. It’s great to see them move into the town centre of Pontypool, and to see their business expanding. They’re one of many local firms with a strong sense of community responsibility, taking part in local business forums and trying to work closely with other local companies to do business.

That’s a good example and a sentiment we should mirror. Building our ‘foundational economy’ is an issue I’ve been working on a lot recently – the question of how as public services we can buy more goods and services from local companies and suppliers, to help our local economy. How we can work not only to get the best price, but to get the best wider value for our community, and the best solutions environmentally too?

We’ve got lots of excellent companies here in Torfaen. We should support them whenever we can, promote them locally and nationally and take a lead as public services by buying from them whenever possible, so that as much money as possible stays in our local economy.

‘Trickle down’ was an economic theory which never worked – the rich just got richer and everyone else just got left behind. Investing in our foundational economies is the reverse of that. By investing in our communities, the benefits will rise up and our local economies will be strengthened.