‘She loved the Commonwealth’

Virendra Sharma, Labour MP for Ealing Southall: The Queen won the respect of all her people. In gurdwaras, temples, mosques and churches across Ealing Southall, tributes are being paid, and services of remembrance and thanksgiving are taking place. That’s happening because it is how generations of people want to mark the end of her reign and celebrate the incredible work she did.

She meant much to every community in the UK, and across the Commonwealth. That is because she had a deep and abiding love of all the countries of the Commonwealth, and saw them as a family with a common experience. She embodied the practices, traditions and values that mean so much to the Asian communities, service, duty, responsibility.

I remember on occasions meeting Her Majesty, twice as Mayor of Ealing, and as always, she was unfailingly polite, regal and interested. Most recently, still in rude health, at Buckingham Palace, she really shone. It was as part of the celebrations for 70 years of the UK-India relationship. Her Majesty had fond memories of India, and of her visit to the state of my birth Punjab. We discussed the relations between the two countries and the close ties that bind us.