Delyth Jewell MS: 'The bitter breath of austerity is still biting at households'

South Wales East Senedd Member Delyth Jewell, who represents Plaid Cymru — South Wales East Senedd Member Delyth Jewell

Delyth Jewell, who is the deputy leader of Plaid Cymru, is one of four regional Senedd Members serving the South Wales East region.

Happy New Year – I hope that 2025 will bring you happiness. I was watching the New Year’s Day Concert in Vienna on Wednesday (on television, I certainly wasn’t lucky enough to have a ticket!), and I was moved not only by the music, but by the words of the conductor, Riccardo Muti. Speaking before the “encores” (when the orchestra traditionally close their annual concert with Strauss’ Radetzky March), he made his plea of hope that this year will be one marked by peace, fraternity and love for the whole world (“pace, fratellanza, e amore in tutto il mondo”).

As sentiments go, it’s hard to beat. Because we live in a time of crisis both at home and abroad. At home, the bitter breath of austerity is still biting at households who are struggling to keep warm (what an iniquity it is that the energy companies are making record profits, at a time when so many pensioners have lost their Winter Fuel Allowance), and both homelessness and food bank usage are on the rise. That is the twisted inheritance of Thatcherite economics: it’s high time we left those dog-eared dogmas behind.

Abroad, too, conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and throughout the Middle East show no signs of abating. A few days ago, we marked the Feast of the Holy Innocents, which recalls the babies and children slaughtered in Bethlehem by King Herod. At the dying end of 2024, that feast felt horribly visceral. Oxfam has reported that more children were killed in Gaza last year than in the equivalent period of any other war in the last 18 years. For 2025 to mark a year of peace, the killings in the Holy Land must stop, all hostages be returned, and those grieving be given space at last to forge a lasting peace between their peoples. Or, as so many of us wrote in our Christmas cards: peace and goodwill to all mankind.

A new year can seem daunting to so many of us. A time when we’re under pressure to set resolutions and to keep them. How many of us will start with good intentions to exercise more, to curb bad habits, or to write that novel that’s supposed to be in all of us? But instead of feeling downhearted about those things we may not manage, we could still set some resolutions that’ll stay as more than just good intentions. Maybe we could all take a leaf out of the book of the man I mentioned earlier, Riccardo Muti, the Italian conductor of an orchestra in Vienna whose members hail from nations all across our fragile, suffering world.

We can pledge to be kinder to one another, to look out for other people, and to learn from our own nation’s patron saint, to do well the little things that might just make someone else’s day brighter.

Fraternity, peace and love: it really is a sentiment that’s hard to beat.

Delyth Jewell MS: ‘The bitter breath of austerity is still biting at households’

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