Her words of wisdom gave us strength in testing times - PM LIZ TRUSS YESTERDAY

PRIME Minister Liz Truss led tributes to the Queen in Parliament yesterday as MPs shared personal stories of their moments with her.

-  BEN GLAZE

The Commons was packed for the memorial with MPs sitting in gangways and standing six-deep at the back of the chamber.

The majority wore black for the marathon 10-hour Commons session, which began with prayers from the Speaker's Chaplain and featured a minute's silence.

It was only the fourth day of Truss's premiership and she had the solemn duty of leading the political response to the Queen's death.

She told a hushed chamber: "The United Kingdom is the great country it is today because of her. Her words of wisdom gave us strength in the most testing times." Truss became the monarch's 15th and last PM on Tuesday when, at Balmoral Castle, she was asked to form a government.

She said the Queen's "legacy will endure through the countless people she met".

Citing the "global history she witnessed and the lives that she touched", Truss added: "She was loved and admired by people across the United Kingdom and across the world.

"One of the reasons for that affection was her sheer humanity. She reinvented the monarchy for the modern age, she was a champion of freedom and democracy around the world, she was dignified but not distant." Labour leader Keir Starmer said the Queen "did not simply reign over us, she lived alongside us, she shared in our hopes and our fears, our joy and our pain, our good times and our bad".

She played "a crucial role as the thread between the history we cherish and the present we own", he said.