Your Royal Highness,

President Kagame,

Madam Secretary General,

Your Excellencies,

ladies and gentlemen,

I?m honoured to perform the final duty of the United Kingdom as Chair-in-Office of the Commonwealth

and hand over the baton to President Kagame, and wish him every success as Chair of our unique association,

encompassing 54 countries and a third of humanity.

One of the newest members is now at the helm,

and more nations are seeking to join,

which tells you everything about the health and vitality of our Commonwealth,

because for all the differences between us,

we are united by an invisible thread of shared values, history and friendship.

The Head of the Commonwealth, Her Majesty the Queen, incarnates everything that brings us together

and it?s fitting that in the year of her Platinum Jubilee,

the association she cherishes should be gathering in the continent where she became Queen.

When the UK became your Chair-in-Office in 2018, the word ?Covid? had not been invented

many of us had no idea what a ?coronavirus? was, and nobody could have known that the worst pandemic for a century would soon claim millions of lives.