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The nation is grieving with “profound sadness” over the passing of the Queen, whose “steadfast loyalty, service and humility” sustained the United Kingdom for over 70 years, the archbishop of Canterbury has said, as tributes poured in for the monarch.
Liz Truss, who met the Queen two days ago to be asked to form a government – led the tributes in her second address outside Downing Street since taking office.
“The death of Her Majesty the Queen is a huge shock to the nation and to the world,” she said in a brief and sombre speech that ended with the solemn words “God save the King”.
She said: “Today the crown passes, as it has done for more than 1,000 years, to our new monarch, our new head of state, His Majesty King Charles III.”
The Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, said the nation should treasure her love as well her mourn the loss. “Our longest-serving and greatest-ever monarch. Above the clashes of politics, she stood not for what the nation fought over but what it agreed upon. In crisis, she reassured us. Reminding us that we are all part of something that stretches back through time. A symbol of the best of us,” he said.
Truss’s predecessor as prime minister, Boris Johnson, said: “This is our country’s saddest day. In the hearts of every one of us there is an ache at the passing of our Queen, a deep and personal sense of loss.
“A bright and shining light that has finally gone out … she seemed so timeless and so wonderful that I am afraid we had come to believe, like children, that she would just go on and on.”
The death of the Queen, who ascended to the throne after the second world war, brings to an end the longest reign of any British monarch – seven years longer than Queen Victoria.
